


Wifey

by transdimensional_void



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Beauty Vlogger, F/F, Fluff and Smut, Gender Issues, Getting Together, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Sex, Slurs, Trans Character, Transphobia, death mention, makeup artist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-20
Updated: 2018-08-18
Packaged: 2019-06-13 16:56:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 37,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15369111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/transdimensional_void/pseuds/transdimensional_void
Summary: Phil's known since she was young that she is Very, Very Gay.She's known since about a month ago that the goddess of a makeup artist at the M•A•C store makes her knees weak.Now, if she only knew how to ask her on a date...





	1. Zombie

**Author's Note:**

> Long time no see! I hope you all enjoy my new chaptered fic. The title of the fic and all of the chapter titles are taken from Qveen Herby songs. I'm planning to post the next chapter on Wednesday!
> 
> Hit me up on Tumblr @transdimensional-void or Twitter @Smartinis, if you want!

Phil was staring again. She knew she shouldn’t. She knew it was rude, could even hear her mum’s voice in her head scolding her and telling her that her eyes would shrivel up and fall out if she didn’t stop.

 

She didn’t stop.

 

She couldn’t _help_ it. 

 

Every day without fail, she’d take her lunch break at 1:05 PM and walk the twenty meters down to the Starbucks that stood like a sleek green and brown island out in the middle of the shopping center floor. She’d order an iced something or other (as often as she came here, she’d grown bored with caramel macchiatos and had decided to switch it up each time) and whatever food looked good.

 

Today, she had an iced vanilla latte and a blueberry muffin. Her mum would probably have told her it was way too much sugar, but she was trying to stop listening to the mum voice in her head all the time these days.

 

Starbucks wasn’t exactly her favorite lunch spot, but it had one special feature that made it her permanent go-to: the seating area gave her the perfect view of the M•A•C store.

 

Phil herself had been in a M•A•C store exactly three times in her short, gay life: once when she was thirteen and her mother had some notion that her tomboyish daughter just needed to be shown the proper way to “spruce herself up a bit.” Mrs. Lester had charged some poor M•A•C makeup artist with the impossible task of transforming Phil from a short-haired, t-shirt-wearing, usually-mistaken-for-a-boy girl to a shiny-lipped, glamorous femme-y goddess. To the makeup artist’s credit, they’d done their best to convince Phil’s mum that Phil suited a more toned-down “natural” look rather than the bright pink blush and glittery eyeshadow Mrs. Lester had gestured toward.

 

Still, when Phil had been handed a mirror to admire the final product, her stomach had sunk and it was all she could do not to grimace in horror. But thanks to her mother’s long lectures on manners, she’d known that would be impolite and had instead plastered on a smile and nodded woodenly when the makeup artist and her mum had gushed over how pretty she’d looked.

 

Her mum had bought her £100 worth of makeup that she had made miserable use of for the next several months until she’d finally got up the courage to sit her mum down and explain that she was never going to be that type of girl. Oh, and also that she was gay. Very, very, very gay.

 

It had taken Phil’s mum a while to let go of the dream of her daughter as a demure young lady who would someday settled down with a handsome young man and raise an adorable family, but eventually she’d got there. When Phil had finally brought home her first girlfriend, her mum, dad, and brother had all welcomed her with open arms.

 

Honestly, Phil didn’t know how her parents hadn’t figured her out before then. She’d demanded to be called _Phil_ when she was five years old for goodness’ sake. Up until then, most of her family had called her Pippa or Pippy or even just Pip, and she’d hated it every time. To five-year-old Phil, they all sounded like something you’d call a particularly dim-witted bird. At first, they’d all tried to tell her that “Dearest, Phil is a boy’s name. Why don’t we just call you Philippa instead?” But Phil had insisted, pointing out very reasonably that “Phil” was right there in Philippa. It was the first four letters, so why couldn’t it be her name too? Phil had always been a very stubborn child, and when they’d realized they’d never talk her out of it, her family had given in.

 

She’d been made fun of a lot because of it, but then again, she’d been made fun of for a lot of things. No one seemed to think that a little girl should be wearing jeans and button up shirts every day or cutting her hair short or playing with the neighborhood boys as often as she played with the girls. But Phil’s family had let her be for the most part, and she’d grown up knowing who she was and what she liked. Everyone else’s opinions she’d just shrugged off. They weren’t her, so what did they know?

 

When she was about seven, she got her first crush, on her neighbor Anya. She hadn’t known it was a crush at first, just that she liked holding Anya’s hand and sitting together under the trees whispering secrets to one another and climbing trees together, and when Anya smiled it made her feel all warm and sunshiney inside. 

 

It wasn’t until she was nearly ten that it dawned on her that when the girls she was friends with talked about cute boys, her thoughts tended to wander, whereas when the boys she was friends with talked about pretty girls, they had her complete and undivided attention. Her mum and dad had friends who were a lesbian couple, so it hadn’t been too difficult to make the connection that she wanted a relationship like Susan and Sylvia had rather than one like her mum and dad had.

 

That had led to more teasing from some of the other kids in town and, in a few cases, to downright bullying. She was eleven the first time someone had screamed the word “lesbo” at her from across the street. She hadn’t looked to see who they were but instead had kept her head down and hurried away as fast as she could.

 

As a teenager, she’d learned that men could be terrifying when they knew she wasn’t interested in them romantically and that women could be terrifying when they knew that she might be.

 

But she’d been fortunate enough to find her people at school and around town: the other queers and dykes and people all across the rainbow of the LGBT spectrum. She’d talked to Susan and Sylvia and other older women who knew what it was like to grow up as a queer girl and could give her advice on navigating the murky waters of dating and relationships and dealing with the idiocy of The Straights.

 

And she’d met girls her own age who made her heart beat fast and her mouth go dry and her hands shake. There was one time when she was twelve and at her first house party that, during an awkward game of spin the bottle, she tried kissing a boy. It had only taken that one time for her to confirm that boys were definitely not for her—especially when the next time the bottle had spun toward her, the person on the other end had been Anya. Her crush had faded a little by then but Oh Boy did the feelings all come rushing back the moment Anya’s warm, soft lips had pressed against hers. The other girl had pulled away quickly, giggling nervously, but Phil had pulled away with her eyes opened.

 

The second time Phil had been in a M•A•C cosmetics store was when she was seventeen and her second girlfriend ever, Cara, had dragged her along on her appointment to get her makeup done for prom. Phil herself had picked out a smart tuxedo with a powder-blue tie that matched the shade of her girlfriend’s dress to perfection. Phil had barely been able to muddle through the fitting and had been almost brain-dead throughout the shopping trip where Cara had picked out her gown. She’d put her foot down at joining her for her hair and makeup appointments…yet somehow, as usual, Cara had got her way.

 

Their relationship hadn’t lasted much beyond prom. It had been a learning experience for Phil, hearing Cara tearfully accuse her of being unsupportive of her girlfriend’s interests. Up until then, she’d taken pride in the subversiveness of refusing to enjoy things like shopping and fashion and makeup despite being a girl. It hadn’t occurred to her that she didn’t have to enjoy those things to support someone else’s enjoyment of them.

 

It wasn’t until she’d started at university that she’d begun to hear terms like “internalized misogyny” and “toxic masculinity” and taken the next steps in unpacking all the ways the society around her had fucked up her perceptions of her own gender.

 

At 23, just graduated from a Master’s program and working at the Apple Store to make rent while she looked for work in her field, she felt that she could truthfully say she was comfortable with who she was in regards to her gender and sexuality. Sometimes when she went to clubs or bars, people would refer to her as “butch,” but she didn’t find that the term really resonated with her personally. Still, it didn’t upset her like it used to. She’d come to terms with her own unique blend of masculine and feminine and the ways it could confuse some people while exciting others. 

 

Other people labeled her “gold star,” and that didn’t bother her like it used to either. When she’d first learned the term’s meaning, she’d argued heatedly with the person who’d said it. She’d pointed out how disgusting it was to rank people based on their sexual experiences or make some people feel less worthy or even ashamed because of the experiences they’d had, especially when compulsory heterosexuality was a thing. She’d argued that it was even worse that they were making men the basis for measuring the worth of queer women. But she’d had that argument one too many times to be able to work up the energy for it anymore. She’d simply accepted that it was a label she would get called sometimes and decided she could just avoid anyone who insisted on using it.

 

The third time she’d entered a M•A•C store had been one month and four days after breaking up with her most recent girlfriend. They’d parted on amicable terms after almost two years of dating. The spark between them had simply fizzled, and when it had come time for graduation, they’d mutually agreed to go their separate ways.

 

Phil had moved back home (well, sort of) to Manchester and rented her own place (with maybe a wee bit of help from her parents) and applied for her old job back at the Apple Store in the shopping center nearest to her parents’ house.

 

It had been her third day back on the job, and she’d decided to walk down to Starbucks on her break for a caffeine and sugar pick-me-up. She’d passed the M•A•C store a zillion times before, back when she was a teen and the shopping center was considered a cool place to hang out and be seen with your friends. Never once had she been tempted to go inside (of her own volition)—never once until that day.

 

Walking past the sleek, black storefront, she’d cast a lazy glance to the side at the colorful, well-lit rows of cosmetics, but her eyes had glazed right over them and come to rest on something entirely different. Or rather, _someone_. 

 

She was dressed all in black (like all the other makeup artists, Phil would later notice): a black leather miniskirt and a loose-fitting, sheer black top that hung off her shoulders to reveal the straps of a black vest underneath.

 

Phil thought it was the shoulders that caught her eyes first. Either that or the thighs. Both revealed glowing expanses of creamy skin made all the brighter by the darkness of the fabric draped over them. Next, her eyes discovered the neck—long, pale, and looking delicious enough to bite. But, oh, that wasn’t even the best part. Her eyes traveled further north to discover the most luscious pair of soft, pink lips she thought she’d ever been blessed to behold. And couldn’t she just imagine those lips against her own lips, her own neck, her own shoulders, her own thighs—

 

“Would you be interested in a demonstration?”

 

The voice jolted her right out of the filthy daydream that had just been taking shape in her imagination.

 

Oh, shit, the goddess had taken her slack-jawed staring for interest in the makeup. Her gaze rose from the glorious lips to find a pair of warm, brown eyes framed by long, dark lashes smiling over at her.

 

“Uh,” she’d said. “Okay,” because frankly this heavenly creature could have asked her if she’d like to be tied up in chains and thrown off a cliff into the sea and she’d probably have agreed without hesitation.

 

And that’s how Phil had ended up entering the M•A•C store voluntarily for the first time in her life. As she followed the makeup artist back to the makeover chair, she noted that she had wavy hair the color of coffee with a tablespoon of milk added. She wore it pulled back into a loose bun that let a few curls escape to artfully frame her gorgeous face.

 

“Just have a seat there,” she said, and Phil almost missed the chair she was staring so hard. “What’s your name?” the divinity asked her as she reached for her kit.

 

“Um,” Phil said, and then, for a single, horrifying moment couldn’t actually remember her own name. “Phil!” she exclaimed when it came back to her.

 

The ethereal being who had graciously deigned to inhabit the same earthly space as Phil smiled, revealing that her front teeth overlapped one another just the tiniest bit and that her left cheek was home to the world’s most heartwarming dimple.

 

“Nice to meet you, Phil,” she said. “I’m Dani. Anything in particular you’re interested in trying today?”

 

Phil dredged the deepest, darkest depths of her memory to recover the name of a type of makeup, any type. It didn’t matter.

 

“Uh, yeah, uh,” she stumbled, “mascara?”

 

The goddess raised an eyebrow as though she found Phil’s answer surprising but then she nodded and reached for a couple of products from her kit.

 

“As pale as your complexion is, black mascara could look really dramatic and make your eyes stand out more,” Dani, Queen of the Heavens, began to explain. “It would match your dyed hair as well. If you were looking for something less noticeable, though, I would suggest brown…”

 

Dani went on for a while, explaining the advantages and disadvantages of different products, using terms like “volumizing” and “non-clumping” that barely meant a thing to Phil. When she asked Phil a question, she did her best to mumble a response, and then finally, it happened. Dani raised her long-fingered hands and told Phil to look up and then that glowing, lovely face was bending near, pale forehead just slightly creased in concentration, and those perfect, plump lips had parted slightly, revealing the shining wetness on their inner edges.

 

Phil found that she could barely breathe her heart was beating so fast. It took all of her brain power to concentrate on not blinking when the big, pokey brush came at her eye and began scraping against her eyelashes. Even so, it was over all too quickly, and Dani was leaning away to admire her handiwork.

 

She smiled at first, but then her expression turned more thoughtful.

 

“I can do a full eye for you, if you’d like,” she told Phil after a moment. “We just got this new palette in from Urban Decay that I’ve been dying to try on someone with your coloring.”

 

Phil blinked. Her eyelashes felt funny. Too heavy and a little sticky, but she was sure that wasn’t Dani’s fault. It was probably just what mascara was supposed to feel like.

 

“Um, I’d like that,” she mumbled, “but it’s my work break, and I should probably go soon—“

 

“Oh, of course,” Dani replied, flashing white teeth in a quick smile. “Here,” and she picked up a mirror and held it so that Phil could see her newly volumized or lengthened or whatever eyelashes.

 

“Wow,” she exclaimed when she saw her face in the mirror. It seemed that Dani had gone with the brown mascara after all, for her eyelashes weren’t the same intense black as those of the gorgeous girl smiling down at her. Still, they were several shades darker than their natural color, which had the effect of making them far more noticeable than usual. Phil hadn’t expected to look so different from just a single makeup product.

 

“Is that a good wow?” came Dani’s voice. She lowered the mirror to find the makeup artist gazing down upon her like a benevolent incarnation of Venus.

 

“Yeah,” Phil said, though inwardly she was plotting the route to the nearest bathroom where she could wash the gunk off as soon as possible. “I’ll take it.”

 

“Great!” Dani said, her dimple reappearing, and as she led Phil away to the till, she couldn’t help thinking that it was a good thing Dani was unaware of the effect she was having on Phil. Right now, she could probably convince her to spend her entire month’s paycheck in the store, providing she flashed that dimple enough times.

 

Once Dani had rung up the mascara, she paused and then reached for a small, translucent bottle full of clear liquid from one of the displays sitting on the counter.

 

“This is a really good makeup remover,” she said, holding the bottle out to Phil. “It’s really gentle on the skin. Won’t dry you out too much, but it also doesn’t leave any kind of residue.”

 

“Oh,” Phil said. Those were probably good qualities to have in a makeup remover, and she was needing to remove some makeup very soon. It was almost as though Dani had read her mind. “Okay, yeah, I’ll take that too,” she said.

 

She was a little stunned by how much her total purchase ended up being, but Dani just grinned and told her again how good the mascara looked on her, how well it brought out her eyes. By the time she was leaving the shop, she was in a daze. The goddess had complimented her eyes. She’d said that Phil looked good.

 

“Hey, Phil,” a voice had called from behind her just as she was stepping back out into the shopping center.

 

“Yes?” Phil asked, unable to keep from grinning as she turned back around to face the ethereally lovely Dani.

 

“You work at the Apple Store, right?” There was a sparkle in her dark eyes that Phil couldn’t quite read.

 

“Oh, yeah,” she said. “How did you know?”

 

Dani gestured toward Phil’s chest. She looked down and saw her blue shirt with the white Apple logo on it.

 

“Oh, right,” she said. “Yeah, I work at the Apple Store. Just over there,” and she waved a hand off toward that end of the shopping center.

 

Dani’s smile deepened, and her eyes sparkled again.

 

“See you around sometime then,” she’d said and then turned on one high-heeled sole and strolled back into the shop.

 

Phil had thought about that for the entire rest of the day, all throughout the end of her shift and then in the evening when she went back to her tiny, empty flat and ate another takeaway dinner alone. She especially thought about it when she got into her cold bed that night. She thought again about those perfect lips, how pink they had been, how soft they had looked. How they’d moved to shape words, to smile, pursed themselves in concentration.

 

She may have ended up imagining a few other things those lips might do….and might have possibly ended up with a hand down her pants, getting off to the thought of it.

 

She also might have been a tad bit too shy to go back to the M•A•C store again after that. What if Dani had realized what all her staring had meant? What if she looked at her and could tell that she’d been having, er, sexy thoughts about her?

 

Unfortunately, avoiding the M•A•C store didn’t make the thoughts of Dani go away, and more than once Phil caught herself slowing down as she passed the store front, hoping for a glimpse of Dani inside. She’d finally broken down and accepted that she had a crush, and what was so wrong with that, damn it?

 

And now, here she was, three weeks later with all her co-workers convinced she had a Starbucks addiction when really what she had was a drop-dead gorgeous M•A•C makeup artist addiction.

 

She finally took her eyes off Dani where she was straightening up a display near the front of the shop so she could lean forward and take a sip of her vanilla iced latte. Five more minutes and she’d have to head back to work. She sighed and then took a big bite of her muffin. Why was she so useless when it came to picking up girls? Every time she managed to actually ask a girl out on a date, it came only after months of protracted pining and working up the courage. Half the time, the girl got fed up and just asked Phil out herself.

 

When she raised her eyes to find Dani again, Phil jolted with shock. The makeup artist — today, she was dressed in fitted leggings, soft-looking flats, and a big fuzzy jumper that hung down past her hips, all black — had abandoned her storefront and was walking right up to the Starbucks table where Phil was sat.

 

All Phil could manage was a deer-in-the-headlights stare and a weak smile. Nevertheless, the moment their eyes met, Dani’s face burst forth in a glorious, dimpled smile. Phil nearly swooned.

 

When she reached Phil’s table, she pulled out a chair across from her and plunked herself down.

 

“Hi,” she said. “What’re you having today?”

 

“Uh,” Phil answered, trying to pull together her thoughts, which had scattered like a litter of puppies just let loose in the garden, “Uh, it’s, uh, blueberry? The, uh, the muffin, I mean.”

 

“Looks yummy,” Dani smiled. “Can I try a bite?”

 

Phil nodded, still staring a bit, and then Dani reached over one pale hand — her nails were painted black with little silver designs on some of them, like a heart and a star and a pattern of lines — and broke off a corner of Phil’s muffin. Phil couldn’t help swallowing as she carried the bit of bread to her lips and popped it in between them.

 

“Mm,” she hummed with pleasure, and her eyelids dropped closed as she savored the bite. Phil’s mouth went dry. When she opened her eyes again, they had that same strange sparkle to them that Phil had noticed last time they’d spoken. “Do you use Instagram?”

 

Phil was still trying to recover from the other girl’s sexy food moan, so it took her a moment to put together a response.

 

“Do I…uh, yeah, I do actually,” she sputtered. “I’m ‘AmazingPhil.’”

 

“That’s a cute name,” Dani grinned and whipped out her phone. It was a sleek silver iPhone X with no case. 

 

“You’ve got balls,” Phil said.

 

The other girl’s head jerked up, and her eyes pierced Phil with a sharp look.

 

“To be carrying around your iPhone without a case like that,” Phil explained.

 

“Oh,” the other girl said, and her expression relaxed again. “I just got this phone a few weeks ago. Really need to get a case for it actually, but I just haven’t got around to it yet.”

 

Phil’s ears pricked up at that.

 

“I can show you some nice ones,” she said. “At the store, I mean. We’re actually getting a new shipment in on Friday, if you’d like to come by then. I can set aside some of the better ones for you. I’m guessing you’d want a black one?”

 

Dani chuckled, a husky sound in the back of her throat, and Phil felt a thrill of want deep in the pit of her stomach. How did one person manage to be so sexy in so many different ways?

 

“I’d love that,” Dani said, looking up from her phone at last. “There, I followed you.” She pushed back her chair and stood up again, and then, as if Phil needed any more heart palpitations, the other girl winked at her. “Follow back if you like what you see,” she said and then waved a black-nailed hand as she wafted back over to her store.

 

Phil only stared after her for a moment. If she didn’t scarf down the rest of her food now, she was going to be late getting back. She swallowed the last bit of her muffin in two bites and then gulped down the rest of her latte. She spared a glance for the M•A•C store as she hurried past and got another thrill when Dani was standing right at the front and waving to her.

 

She waved back, flashed a grin, and then hurried back to work.

 

They were busy that afternoon, so it wasn’t until after her shift when she was waiting at the bus stop for her bus home that she finally had a chance to check Instagram. She saw in her activity that she had one new follower from several hours earlier: danifire.

 

She clicked on the username, and when the profile loaded, she nearly dropped her phone.

 

Dani’s Instagram account had 950,000 followers. Her profile picture showed her lying next to a swimming pool in a black bikini with silver accents and her dark hair down and flowing over her shoulders and a pair of huge, black sunglasses on top of her head. Phil gulped. That was so much more of Dani than she had ever dreamed of being able to see. She wondered if she’d somehow died and gone to heaven.

 

She began scrolling through her posts. A lot of them were makeup-related, either hauls of products she’d recently bought or selfies showing off some look that she’d created. Others focused more on her outfits or just showing off her beautiful body (Phil particularly appreciated those ones). The one that drew Phil up short, though, was a selfie of Dani wearing a headset and seated in a massive, cushy desk chair. The caption said, “Playing Breath of the Wild on Twitch in an hour. Come hang out!”

 

Up until then, Phil had been thinking of Dani as this otherworldly being who had come down to earth from some planet where all the girls were gorgeous and flawlessly coiffed and made up. She was like some kind of Fashion Goddess—wholly perfect and wholly unattainable. It had never occurred to Phil that she might be a gamer, and a pretty serious one judging by how expensive that headset looked.

 

Phil flicked back up to the top of her profile, looking for the follow button, and that’s when she finally read Dani’s bio: “Professional Makeup Artist • Gamer • YouTuber • Putting the B and the T in LGBT • Links:”

 

It then listed out links to all her other social media. But Phil’s mind was still hung up on “the B and the T.” Especially the “T.” But also the “B.” Because the “B” meant that she actually had a chance with Dani. She wasn’t hopelessly pining after yet another straight girl. Also, she’d scrolled through quite a lot of pictures and hadn’t seen a single one that looked like it contained a significant other.

 

But then there was the “T.” Phil had known a fair number of trans people through the years, though most of them had been trans guys. She’d hung out with a pretty queer crowd in high school, and then she’d become heavily involved with the LGBT+ Society at her university. Most of the trans girls she’d met over the years were more into dating men, though, or at least, that was the impression she’d always got from them. And she hadn’t really been interested in dating any of them anyway.

 

Not that she was against the idea of dating a trans girl. She wasn’t transphobic or anything. It did kind of change her view of Dani, though. Like, she was really beautiful of course, but what if she, you know…had a penis?

 

Phil’s bus rumbled up just then, and she piled on with everyone else who had been waiting. When she’d found an empty seat and settled herself there, she pulled her phone out again and stared down at Dani’s profile. 

 

There was that picture again, of Dani lying out by the pool, acres of flawless skin on display. Phil couldn’t believe that she was actually— Well, no, she was actually a girl. Of course she was. It was just that Phil would never have guessed she was trans. She didn’t _look_ trans.

 

Phil stopped and shook her head again. No, she knew better than that. She did. She really did. How many times had she heard her trans friends talk about how shitty the whole concept of “passing” was, as if cis people were supposed to be the ideal that trans people aspired to, and yet at the same time, how much most of them longed to simply be read as their gender, no questions asked? Hadn’t she read whole essays taking apart the idea of “looking” male or “looking” female? And still, her first thought upon finding out that Dani was trans was to marvel at how well she passed for a cis girl.

 

She locked her phone screen and shoved it back into her pocket. She’d been so excited that Dani had shown interest in her, had been over the moon in fact all afternoon wondering where things were going. And now she just felt kind of…weird…conflicted. She didn’t want to be one of those awful cis people who refused to date trans people just because they were trans. She’d heard plenty of cis lesbians say something along those lines and had always been disgusted by it. Yet she couldn’t deny that the knowledge that Dani was trans had altered her feelings about her.

 

When she finally reached her flat, she didn’t feel hungry anymore. Her stomach felt all twisted up. Instead, she lay down on her bed and curled up in her duvet and tried to reason her way through this. 

 

She was attracted to Dani. _Very_ attracted to Dani. Even just thinking about her smile and the way her eyes had looked into Phil’s had her heart rate accelerating all over again.

 

Without even really thinking about it, she pulled her phone out once more and opened it up to Dani’s Instagram. She was _so_ beautiful. Phil found herself staring at that bikini picture again. When it came to Dani, she really couldn’t keep herself from staring.

 

So, what was the problem then? Why did everything suddenly feel so much more complicated that it had been? A hot girl had shown interest in her, had pretty plainly invited her to get to know her better. Though, and Phil frowned as the thought occurred to her, she hadn’t given Phil her phone number. Wasn’t that usually the next step? Why had she asked her to follow her Instagram instead?

 

Maybe Dani wasn’t interested in dating her at all. Maybe she just saw Phil as another potential fan.

 

Phil’s heart sank. Yeah, what was she even worrying about anyway? It didn’t matter whether Dani was trans or cis or what particular set of genitals she had. There was no way a girl that perfect would ever be interested in having someone as shy and plain as Phil get anywhere near her genitals one way or another.

 

Phil sighed and scrolled her way down Dani’s profile, stopping again at the selfie of her getting ready to play Zelda. Phil’s own stack of games lay just on the other side of the wall in her living room. Most of the girls she’d dated in the past had been at least a little into video games, but none had ever been quite as obsessed as she was. Phil was the sort who had to buy a new game the moment it came out and then wouldn’t rest until she’d finally beaten it.

 

For just a moment, she had allowed herself to imagine having a girlfriend who was the exact same way. But wasn’t she just projecting her own fantasies onto Dani? It was just one picture. There was no way of knowing whether she was really that into gaming. Well, actually, as many social media accounts as she had posted in her bio, with a little digging, Phil could probably find out all sorts of things about her.

 

A little flame of hope kindled inside her. Maybe that was the real reason Dani had wanted Phil to follow her on Instagram. She _wanted_ her to see all of this, to find out more about who she was and get to know her better.

 

She started with her YouTube channel. Some of the videos were makeup-related. Actually, a lot of the videos were make-up related. Phil clicked on one anyway. If that was Dani’s primary content, then she might as well get a feel for it. 

 

“Hello, internet!” Dani grinned at the camera with that megawatt smile. “Today I’ll be reviewing the new Winter Solstice highlighter palette from Huda Beauty.” She held up a pretty pastel-colored box that Phil assumed was the palette. “Now, you all know I’m a MASSIVE fan of highlighter. I mean, just because I am completely empty and dead inside like the blackness of the void does not mean that my face can’t glow like the sun.”

 

Phil actually laughed. The way Dani said it, completely deadpan, made it impossible for her not to.

 

“Here are our color options,” she said, flipping the box open with her beautifully-manicured nails. “Frosted Kiss, which is this kind of matte peach color here, Northern Lights, which is this shimmery gold, Arctic Glow, which to me looks like it could be a duo chrome?, and Winter Rose, this deep pink down here in the corner. I’m going to try them all on, but I’m not so sure how the Winter Rose is going to look on my skin tone, honestly. My cheeks get pink enough as it is. I look like a god damned blushing milk maid half the time.”

 

To her surprise, Phil ended up watching the entire video. Not only that, but she ended up laughing several more times throughout and by the end of it, she found herself actually wanting to watch more of Dani’s makeup videos.

 

She binged several more in a row, learning more about makeup in an hour than she had during the entire twenty-three years of her life prior.

 

Then she went back to Dani’s channel and found a link to her second channel, the one where she posted recordings of her gaming livestreams.

 

Those were a lot longer but also fit much more closely with Phil’s own interests. Nearly two hours later, she was shocked to realize that she’d been watching Dani’s videos for three hours straight… And her crush had metastasized to epic proportions.

 

Okay, so whether or not she and Dani ever actually managed to date, she 1000% wanted to be her friend. The other girl was hilarious in a dark, sarcastic way that had caught Phil completely off-guard. Perhaps she should have suspected, considering that she hardly wore any color other than black. Also, her image of Dani as an angelic being had been thoroughly debunked by the endless barrage of foul profanity which was Dani playing video games. The girl cursed like a sailor trying to win a swearing contest.

 

After she’d finally torn herself away from Dani’s YouTube channel, Phil went at once for her mobile. Opening the Instagram app yet again, she navigated to Dani’s page and finally followed her back. Then she immediately turned on notifications for her. She wanted to make sure she would know the next time she was doing a gaming livestream.

 

Phil was feeling better by now, so she unwrapped herself from her duvet and made her way into the kitchen to put together a bowl of cereal. She still didn’t feel up to cooking a full meal. She was halfway through her bowl of Crunchy Nut when off in the other room her mobile dinged.

 

With a half-hearted grumble, she set aside her cereal and shuffled off to the bedroom to retrieve her phone.

 

When she unlocked the screen, she almost couldn’t believe her eyes. Dani had sent her a message on Instagram. She swiped right.

 

_hey, phil! thanks for following back. it was really nice to meet you the other day, and i couldn’t help notice you coming by the store sometimes. you should’ve come and said hi. you seem really cool :)_

 

And just like that, Phil’s vision was going blurry and her heart was pounding in the back of her throat. Oh, wow. Okay, so. She hadn’t read their interaction earlier today wrong. Dani had wanted her to follow her Instagram so that they could message each other there.

 

Phil stumbled back to the living room with her mobile clutched against her chest. She flung herself down on the sofa, having already mostly forgotten about her Crunchy Nut.

 

_you seem really cool too_ , she typed out. _um, is it bad that I’ve already binge-watched a bunch of your videos??_

 

Almost as soon as she’d sent the message, the little circle popped up at the bottom of the chat box indicating that Dani was typing a response back.

 

_you did?? oh god. uh, what did you think??_ She punctuated it with the emoji of the monkey covering its eyes.

 

Was she actually worried that Phil hadn’t liked her videos? When she had, like, 600,000+ subscribers and hundreds of thousands of views on every video? When she was literally the most beautiful woman Phil had ever laid eyes on, and she was pretty sure that people would willingly watch footage of her just standing in an empty room and staring at a camera?

 

_they were great! your style is really funny. i don’t know a lot about makeup, but i think i learned something from watching your videos_

 

_lol. i kinda guessed you didn’t_ , came Dani’s immediate response.

 

Phil’s whole face turned red. Fortunately, no one could see that here in the privacy of her own home.

 

_that obvious?_

 

_very obvious. but in a very cute way <3_

 

Phil bit her lip. Crap. Dani had just called her cute. And sent her a heart. Was this flirting? This had to be flirting, right?

 

_i watched some of your livestreams too_ , Phil typed out, _is that something you do a lot? you’re really good_

 

_yeah! i try to stream at least once a week. you gonna watch next time? ;)_

 

Phil’s heart went badump. A winky emoji was a definite sign of flirting. And that reminded her of how Dani had winked at her before leaving her table earlier in the day. 

 

_i’d love to_ , Phil typed out and then bit her lip before adding, _we could also play together sometime. always looking for new people to own at Mario Kart_

 

_you wish, bitch_ , Dani replied, adding the purple demon face emoji. _i mean, you wish you could own me. not that you wish we could play together sometime. coz I think that’d be really fun, actually_

 

_bring it on_ , Phil typed and then realized that she was full-on grinning down at her phone. Her stomach was full of excited butterflies, and god it had been so long since she’d felt this way about any girl. She’d been with Jill for so long that even before they’d burned out, things had already settled into a comfortable groove. She’d half-forgotten what this was like, that thrill of fear and anticipation that came with starting a new relationship.

 

That made her pause.

 

So, was that what this was? A new relationship?

 

She looked down at the conversation she and Dani had just had and thought about how excited she’d become just seeing that the other girl had messaged her.

 

So, yeah. Yeah, if Dani could make her feel this way just by flirting with her a little bit, she wanted more of this. Whatever stupidness had possessed her earlier, well she was over it. There was no denying she was attracted to Dani, so why not just see where things went?

 

It was around that time that Phil finally remembered her abandoned bowl of cereal, now thoroughly soggy. She shrugged and ate it anyway. Dani wanted to meet up to play games together sometime. Better yet, Dani actually seemed to like her back. Nothing could get her down right now, not even soggy cereal.


	2. Gucci

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bury me in Gucci.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really appreciate the wonderful response I got to the first chapter. Thank you so much to everyone who read, left kudos, commented, messaged me on Twitter, etc.! <3
> 
> Planning to post the next chapter on Sunday!

Phil woke up in the morning to a notification from Instagram. Dani had posted a new picture. Phil was still lying in bed, eyes barely open, but she swiped at once to see what it was.

 

“Bury me in Gucci #ootd” the caption read. There were about a million more hashtags after that, but Phil didn’t have it in her to read through all of them. Instead she focused on Dani.

 

She was stood outside somewhere. There was a grey wall with some bushes in front—maybe a block of flats? Her outfit (which Phil guessed was Gucci?) consisted of a pair of skinny jeans that emphasized the shocking length of her legs and a fluttery sheer black top with little pink and green flower vines climbing up from its lower hem. She was also wearing her huge, black sunglasses, which Phil now noticed had the Gucci logo on the side. Her face was shiny in a way that Phil now knew meant she was wearing highlighter.

 

She lay in bed staring at the photo for way too long. The sheerness of the top made it obvious that all Dani was wearing underneath was a sleek black bra, and when she zoomed in a little closer, Phil was pretty sure she saw the glint of jewelry in Dani’s belly button.

 

Phil finally managed to stop staring at the picture by clicking on the message icon instead and sending off a quick message to Dani:

 

_cute outfit. could use more black though?_

 

Was that too presumptuous? Dani seemed to have a good sense of humor about herself, at least in her videos. What if she was more sensitive in real life?

 

Phil worried about it all morning as she got ready for the day and then headed out to work. It didn’t help that so far there had been no reply from the other girl. (And she’d been checking every couple of minutes ever since she’d sent the message.)

 

Phil didn’t get her reply until it was almost time for her lunch break. Her mobile buzzed where she kept it in her pocket, but as she was in the midst of ringing up a customer, she couldn’t very well check it. As soon as that customer was finished, another approached her and then another, so it ended up that she wasn’t able to open the message until she had escaped to lunch.

 

She was already halfway to Starbucks when she finally read it.

 

_you’re right. what was i thinking? i’ll make sure not to wear a single shred of color on our date :P_

 

Phil gulped. Date?

 

She waited until she’d gone through the whole line at Starbucks and sat down at her usual table (the one closest to the M•A•C store) before she typed out a response.

 

_perfect. i can’t be seen picking up someone wearing actual colors from her place of work or residence on friday, say around 6:30 or 7:00?_

 

She actually saw Dani read her message. She’d just rung up a customer, and the store was empty for the moment. She was still standing at the till, but she cast a glance over in Phil’s direction and smirked before pulling her mobile from her pocket. Her smirk turned into a full, dimply smile when she read Phil’s message. As Phil watched, she completely turned her back on her and bent over her phone.

 

A few moments later, Phil’s phone buzzed again in her pocket. She wrestled it out with trembling hands.

 

_you’ll be picking her up from her place of work at 6:45 sharp. you will then be taking her out to dinner. she has the perfect place in mind already. make sure to bring a shirt that doesn’t have the apple logo on it._

 

Phil grinned and glanced up from her phone toward the M•A•C store. She wasn’t surprised to see that Dani was watching her over her shoulder.

 

_think i can manage that ;]_

 

 

**

 

On Friday, which was exactly two days later, Phil volunteered to help sort through the new shipment of phone cases that had just come in. It was actually really fun examining each one and trying to imagine Dani carrying it. She came across several that she thought might fit well with Dani’s monochrome, minimalist style, and she set them aside without the least bit of shame, telling her co-workers that she wanted to show them to a friend.

 

_picked out some cool cases for you. come by the store when you’re free._

 

She shot off the message quickly and then headed back out onto the floor before her manager could scold her for texting on the job.

 

Dani showed up around noon, presumably on her own lunch break. She was, as promised, dressed head-to-toe in solid black today. She wore some kind of dress with lacy panels running the length of the sleeves and plain black tights with flats.

 

She strolled right up to Phil with a wide smile gracing her features and then stopped in front of her.

 

“I heard I might find a ‘cool’ iPhone case somewhere in this store,” she said. “Think you can help with that?”

 

Phil was smiling so big already that her cheeks ached.

 

“Yeah, of course,” she said, waving Dani over toward the back of the store. “Just wait here.”

 

The other girl took up a spot next to a wall of laptop accessories and crossed her arms behind her back in a waiting posture. Phil couldn’t help that her eyes immediately went to Dani’s chest and the way the movement pushed her boobs forward into prominence. Beneath the plain black fabric of her dress front, Dani had a nice set of B-cups.

 

Phil ripped her eyes away, hoping the other girl hadn’t noticed. _Musn’t think about boobs. Mustn’t think about boobs_ , Phil chanted to herself as she hurried into the employees-only area and scooped up the collection of phone covers she’d set aside.

 

“Here we go,” she called as she brought her armful out and laid the plastic-wrapped covers on the nearest flat surface, which happened to be a display of iPads. “These are the ones I thought you’d like best, but there are a ton more on the wall over there.”

 

She felt Dani come up beside her and then turned to watch as the other woman bent to examine the collection. A soft strand of hair fell loose from her half pulled-back hairstyle and came to rest against her pale cheek. Phil’s fingers almost itched with how badly she wanted to reach out and brush it aside.

 

“Wow, Phil,” Dani exclaimed softly. “You picked well.” She glanced up at Phil through those long, dark lashes, and Phil’s heart rate skyrocketed at once.

 

God, she had it so bad.

 

“Thanks,” she said, feeling her cheeks warm. “Let me know if you want to buy any of them, and I’ll ring you up with my employee discount.”

 

“I love this one,” Dani said, reaching out and stroking over one of the little plastic baggies. It crinkled softly under her long fingers. The case inside was black with veins of white running through it, like marble. “This one too,” she said, lifting her hand and moving it to a different one, also black but with a pattern that mimicked lace. Phil kind of thought it matched the dress she was wearing right now.

 

“Want to try them on your phone? See what they look like?” Phil suggested, voice strangely hoarse.

 

“Oh, you can do that?” Dani asked, looking up with surprise. “Yeah, that’d be great.”

 

Phil might have drawn out the process of unwrapping the cases and putting them on Dani’s phone for her a tad bit longer than was strictly necessary. Dani didn’t seem to notice, though, and since she was technically helping a customer, none of her co-workers even batted an eye.

 

“Mm,” Dani hummed, as Phil held out the phone with the second case on it. She leaned in close to look over Phil’s shoulder, her whole right side brushing up against Phil’s body. Phil tried to hold in a shiver. She hadn’t noticed before that Dani was almost the exact same height as her, maybe a shade taller. “I think I like this one a little bit better. But, you know what, I think I’ll take them all.”

 

“What?” Phil said, body jolting in shock.

 

“Mm hmm,” Dani replied, leaning in a bit closer for just a moment, as though she were trying to make absolutely sure Phil knew she was doing it on purpose, before she reached out and started collecting all of the cases. “I need different cases for different outfits, and you really did pick out a lot of good ones.”

 

“Oh,” Phil said. “Oh, well, um, I’m glad you like them.”

 

Dani smiled at her for a moment before reaching over and gently wriggling her phone free of Phil’s hand.

 

“Are you going to ring me up now?”

 

“Oh! Right!” Phil shook herself back to alertness and fumbled the iPhone she used to ring up purchases from her pocket.

 

“I’m really looking forward to tonight,” she said as she scanned the codes on eight different phone cases. “I don’t suppose I could get a hint about where it is I’ll have the pleasure of buying you dinner?”

 

Dani’s lips quirked into a little smirk.

 

“We’re going half and half,” she replied. “And let’s just say it’s somewhere with a view.”

 

Phil grinned.

 

“I can’t wait,” she said as Dani gathered her heap of phone cases. She had refused the carrier bag, pointing out that she could fit them all easily into her purse back at work.

 

“Me either,” Dani replied, winked at her, and then strolled away with a “See you later!” tossed over her shoulder.

 

Phil might have stared after her retreating form for far too long and got scolded for it when her manager walked by. Just possibly.

 

The rest of the day dragged on forever. The six hours until her shift ended felt like six years. The moment she was free, she dashed down to the nearest bathroom and changed out of her work clothes into a brand new pair of black skinny jeans she had bought just for this date and her favorite green and white plaid button-down. She took her time messing with her hair until her fringe fell just right over her forehead, the ends just brushing her pale eyebrows.

 

She checked the time on her phone: 6:14.

 

“Ugghhhh,” she groaned. Another entire half hour of waiting for Dani to be off work. Maybe she could just start wandering down that way…and if she was a little early, that would probably be okay? She could just…….browse the makeup?

 

She walked really, really slowly from the bathroom down to the M•A•C store, but when she got there, it was still barely 6:20. She gritted her teeth and braced herself for a full twenty-five minutes of feigning interest in beauty products.

 

The first thing she noticed upon stepping into the store was that Dani was nowhere in sight. The second thing she noticed was that one of the other makeup artists had immediately caught sight of her and was bearing down upon her with the light of salesmanship in their eye.

 

“Looking for something?” they asked, cocking their head to one side and blinding her with a white-toothed smile. Their eyes were a startling blue that stood in stark contrast to the shocking red color splashed across their eyelids.

 

“Oh, uh,” Phil fumbled. “I was, uh, well.” She bit her lip, trying to decide if she should keep up her pretense of being a customer or just admit that she was waiting for Dani. Would that, like, get Dani in trouble or something?

 

“Don’t mind her, Ryan,” came a voice from behind Phil, and she turned to see yet another black-smocked makeup artist stood behind her. “This is Dani’s girl. Hi, I’m Letizia,” and the newcomer held out a hand to Phil.

 

She took it, feeling her face flush with embarrassment. _Dani’s girl_.

 

“Hi, I’m Phil,” she said back, wishing her voice were stronger.

 

“Oh, so you’re the one Dani can’t stop talking about,” the first makeup artist, Ryan, said. Phil looked back at them and caught them rolling their eyes. “Hi, by the way. Ryan,” they said, sticking out a hand for her to shake as well.

 

“Hi,” Phil said. “Nice to meet you.”

 

“So,” Letizia announced, drawing Phil’s attention back to her. “What are your intentions toward our daughter?”

 

Phil blinked and spluttered for a moment while on her other side, Ryan let out a soft chuckle.

 

“Um, uh, well,” she stammered, her whole face burning. “I was gonna take her out to dinner and, uh, talk to her? Some more?”

 

Letizia was studying her with a narrow-eyed gaze.

 

“Oh, come off it, Letizia, you’ve had your fun,” Ryan said then, chuckling again. “Don’t worry, Phil, she thinks that just because she’s, like, ten years older than the rest of us, she gets to be our mum.”

 

“Well,” Phil said, struggling to regain her composure under their curious stares. “I’m glad to know that Dani has friends looking out for her.”

 

“We are, you know,” Ryan said suddenly then, the smile melting right off their face. “You break her heart—“ and they raised a finger to make a cutting motion across their neck.

 

Phil felt an icy chill in her blood.

 

She swallowed thickly, waiting for one of them to laugh or something. When neither did, she nodded and tried to speak, but only a little squeak came out. She cleared her throat and tried again.

 

“I, uh, I have no plans to break any hearts,” she said in as strong a voice as she could muster. It was barely louder than a whisper.

 

“Great!” Ryan said, their expression growing immediately sunny. “Now, can I interest you in a demonstration?”

 

Dani found her a short while later, seated meekly in the makeover chair while Ryan demonstrated the proper way to rub moisturizer on her face so as not to cause premature wrinkling.

 

“Couldn’t convince Phil to try any actual makeup?” she queried, peering over Ryan’s shoulder to see what product they had picked out to show Phil. Phil noticed that she’d done something different to her hair and makeup since she’d seen her earlier. Her new look was much more “night on the town” and less “professional at work.”

 

“Sadly, she refused it all,” they sighed. They favored Phil with a considering smile. “She’s more stubborn than she looks.”

 

Dani regarded her as well, eyes bright with amusement.

 

“Is that so?” she asked. “Good to know. You ready to go, or are you actually interested in buying something off this slag?”

 

Ryan pretended to be offended, and the two of them traded a few insults back and forth, but Phil hardly noticed because Dani had reached down and wrapped one warm hand around her wrist, tugging gently to get her out of the chair. She didn’t fully come to her senses again until they were pushing their way out of the shopping center doors and into the golden light of early evening.

 

“You look really nice,” Phil managed, but just barely. Dani still had a firm grasp on her wrist and seemed to have no intention of letting it go. She was leading her down the pavement to one of the nearby bus stops.

 

“Thanks,” Dani smiled. “You cleaned up pretty nice yourself.”

 

The words sent a warm, tingly feeling through Phil’s body. She could feel her face turning red again.

 

“I’m sorry,” Dani said, dropping her wrist suddenly. “Does that make you uncomfortable? I should have asked first.”

 

“Oh, no, it’s fine,” Phil assured her. And then, heart pounding in her chest, she reached down and took hold of Dani’s hand herself. “I mean, I don’t mind, if you don’t mind.”

 

For the first time, she saw faint color steal up into Dani’s cheeks.

 

The other girl shook her head and then curled her fingers around Phil’s.

 

“Hey,” Dani said after a moment.

 

“Yeah?”

 

“I realized I never asked you what pronouns you use.”

 

“She/her,” Phil answered, straightening up a bit. It was a question she got pretty often, mostly from queer people, though occasionally from others. Even more often, though, people would straight up ask her whether she was a boy or a girl, or more rudely, 'What are you?’ “You?” she returned.

 

“The same,” Dani replied, tossing her a smile and giving her fingers a squeeze.

 

After that, they stood in silence until the bus came, Phil’s heart hammering in her chest as she tried not to think too hard about the fact that she was actually holding this beautiful goddess’s hand. She had dared to touch her and miraculously not been struck by lightning.

 

Once they were on the bus, and settled in, Phil turned to Dani.

 

“How did you like _Breath of the Wild_ , by the way? I haven’t got around to buying it yet.”

 

Dani’s eyes went wide as she turned away from where she’d been glancing out the window.

 

“You haven’t? Oh my god, you need to,” she proclaimed. “Wait, you’ve played other _Zelda_ games before, right?”

 

That pulled a quick laugh from Phil as her memory was flooded with images of all the hours she’d devoted to the franchise growing up. She gave a nod.

 

“Thought so,” Dani grinned and then launched into a full-on monologue expounding upon all the things that made it so incredible and how she was genuinely enjoying it more than any other _Zelda_ game she’d played before.

 

Phil listened with rapt attention, throwing out the occasional question but mostly content to watch Dani grow ever more passionate in her praise of the game. There was something about the way her eyes lit up and her words tumbled over one another in their excitement to get out that made Phil want to just sit back and bask.

 

“So,” she said, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth, when Dani finally wound down. “I guess that means that you liked it?”

 

The other girl snorted and bumped into her shoulder.

 

“No, I hated it,” she muttered. “Terrible. Never recommend it.”

 

Phil laughed and bumped her back.

 

“Oh, this is us!” Dani exclaimed all of a sudden, reaching up and pushing the button to let the driver know to stop.

 

Once they were down on the street, Phil paused and took a look around. She’d been so engrossed in Dani that she hadn’t paid much attention to which way they were going. She could see now that they were right smack dab in the middle of the city, surrounded by shops and fancy-looking buildings.

 

“This way,” Dani called, catching her eye and then, very deliberately, reaching out and taking hold of Phil’s hand again.

 

She led her a block further down and then stopped in front of a particularly shiny building that stretched high up into the sky. Phil glanced around for a sign, and then her heart stopped when she found it. It was the Manchester Hilton. Dani had brought her to…a hotel?

 

She felt a slight tug on her hand and looked up to see Dani pulling her toward the front doors.

 

“Come on,” she urged. “We’ve got a reservation for 7:30.”

 

A reservation? Okay, that sounded restaurant-like. There must be a restaurant inside the hotel. Of course. Phil took a deep breath and tried to calm herself down.

 

Once inside, Dani led her, not to a restaurant, but to the lifts. 

 

“Um,” Phil said. “Where is it we’re going again?”

 

Dani shot her a look and then let out a bark of laughter.

 

“Oh, crap. You must be wondering what in the hell we’re doing in a hotel. Sorry. There’s this really cool bar up at the top, and you can see the whole city from there. We should be seated right as the sun begins to set.”

 

Relief flooded Phil’s chest.

 

“That sounds amazing,” she said.

 

“It is,” Dani agreed. Then the lift dinged, and the doors opened to let a couple of people off. She and Dani took their place inside, and Dani pressed the button for the highest floor.

 

It was a long ride up, but Dani held her hand the entire way.

 

The doors opened with another ding on what was, in fact, a very swanky-looking restaurant and bar. For a moment, Phil panicked, worrying that her nice new button-down might not be up to dress code, but then Dani was tugging her gently inside the room, and she forget about everything except the feeling of the other girl's hand wrapped around her own.

 

They were shown to a table right next to one of the wide windows, and for a moment after taking her seat, all Phil could do was stare down at the city spread out below.

 

Dani had been right. Just now, as they settled themselves at their table, the sun was making a final descent toward its bed of hazy orange clouds and distant buildings. Phil drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly, feeling giddy. It was like some sort of fantasy come to life: plain, old Phil floating high up among the clouds with the most gorgeous woman she’d ever met right across the table from her. She dared a glance over at Dani, who had sat back in the plush armchair and crossed one shapely thigh over the other. Phil’s heart stopped when she noticed that, rather than tights, Dani was actually wearing thigh-highs that left a tantalizing sliver of pale skin exposed between stocking and skirt.

 

“Can I start you with a drink?”

 

A voice snapped Phil’s attention back to the room around them, and she looked up to find a server standing over them and Dani’s eyes twinkling at her from over the drink menu.

 

Phil opened her mouth, but Dani beat her to it.

 

“Do you drink?” she asked, lowering the menu so that Phil could finally see the smile she hadn’t been able to suppress.

 

“Yeah,” Phil nodded.

 

“What do you like? I’m buying.”

 

Phil might have objected if she weren’t acutely aware of the server stood there, waiting to take their order. She wished she’d used her time to review the menu rather than gawping at Dani’s thighs. She felt the need to blurt out something, anything at all.

 

“Uh, something fruity?”

 

She cringed almost the moment the words were out of her mouth. She must sound like an utter rube. Why couldn’t she have come up with something that sounded sophisticated and— and fancy, just like this place?

 

But Dani was still smiling, and her eyes had dropped down to scan the menu. When she looked up, she blinded the server with her smile, and Phil could’ve sworn she saw them go a little cross-eyed in response.

 

“We’ll have a Bittersweet Symphony and a Pixelated Porn Star.” The server didn’t bat an eye at the ridiculous names, but instead murmured that the drinks would be right out and then disappeared as quickly as they’d come.

 

“Is the porn star for me or for you?” Phil asked in a low, conspiratorial tone once their server was out of ear shot.

 

Dani grinned, tossing the drink menu down and picking up the food menu instead.

 

“I figured we’d share,” she said, and Phil had to work very hard not to picture that.

 

Silly names notwithstanding, the drink choices turned out to be perfect. They showed up within minutes of the server disappearing, and Phil had to admit she was impressed. Fancy places apparently had good service.

 

“So…” Dani said, eyeing Phil over the rim of her glass and then setting it down. After a quick taste test, she’d kept the Pixelated Porn Star for herself and let Phil have the Bittersweet Symphony, which suited Phil just fine. The drink was fruity and sweet and exactly the kind of thing Phil would have ordered for herself.

 

“So?” Phil replied, trying not to squirm under that warm, direct gaze.

 

“You sound like you’re from around here,” Dani said, one side of her mouth quirking up in a tentative smile. “Manchester native?”

 

“Not exactly,” Phil shook her head. She had both hands gripped around her glass and was holding it out in front of her almost like a shield. “I’m from a place called Rawtenstall. It’s about an hour away by bus?”

 

Dani shook her head.

 

“Don’t think I’ve heard of it. Is it nice there?”

 

Phil shrugged and finally noticed just how hard she was squeezing her glass. She set it down to keep herself from accidentally breaking it.

 

“No,” she said. “I was pretty glad to leave when it came time for uni.” She paused, then, “You sound like you’re _not_ from around here.”

 

The other girl’s eyes darted away then, and it was her turn to shrug.

 

“Yeah, I’m from near Reading.”

 

Phil waited for her to elaborate, but when she didn’t, she decided it must not be a topic Dani wanted to discuss. She fished around for something else to say instead, but the other girl beat her to it.

 

“What did you study at uni?”

 

“English,” Phil said, a little too quickly. “Uh, and video post-production.”

 

Dani’s eyes opened a bit wider at that.

 

“Really? That’s so cool. What made you choose that?”

 

It took Phil a moment to process the question because Dani had followed it by picking up her drink and pressing her perfect lips against the rim as she took another sip. Maybe it was the distraction that led to Phil’s next confession slipping out.

 

“Uh…oh, I just… Actually, it’s because of YouTube.”

 

Dani’s eyebrows shot up, and she set her drink back down again.

 

“Wait, do you make YouTube videos?”

 

Phil bit her lip, but there was no taking it back now. She nodded.

 

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

 

“Oh, they’re not, like, good or—“ Phil said, waving her hands in the air as though she could clear the confession from Dani’s memory like so much smoke. “I only have, like, a few thousand subscribers, and—“

 

“How are you ladies doing?”

 

Phil jerked around to see that the server had rematerialized beside their table. Crap. She hadn’t even had time to look at the food menu yet, but her stomach was already rumbling. She picked up the sleek, leather book and flipped it open.

 

“Uhh,” she stalled, casting her eye frantically down the list of food items. “Dani, do you know what you want?”

 

“Why don’t we share something?” her dinner partner returned, the second time she’d suggested that now, and Phil was just a tad envious of how calm and assured she managed to sound. Then again, she’d probably been here before.Dani just had that air of someone who _belonged_ in this kind of place. “I like to get the tomatoes and mozzarella. We could start by splitting that?”

 

Phil struggled not to make a face. She hated cheese. Like, really, seriously hated cheese. But she couldn’t just say that, right? What if Dani thought she was boring and uncultured for hating cheese?

 

“So, an order of the heritage tomatoes and mozzarella?” the server asked.

 

There was a pause, while Phil waged an inward battle between her cheese disgust and her fear of making Dani dislike her.

 

“Why don’t you give us a moment longer?” Dani’s voice cut across her inner turmoil.

 

Phil dared a peek up at Dani’s face over the edge of the menu as the waiter excused themselves once again and flushed warm when she found the other girl’s eyes sparkling over at her.

 

“You know I don’t bite, right?” she said when Phil’s eyes met hers. “At least, not without consent."

 

A nervous giggle bubbled up out of Phil.

 

“I know,” she muttered. “I’m just…” She stopped and gulped in a huge breath before letting it out slowly. “You’re really, really hot,” she said then, her whole face burning. She forced the words out anyway, “and I like you a lot, and…and I’m awkward and weird and maybe waiting for you to realize you’re way, way out of my league.”

 

To Phil’s surprise, Dani’s response to that was a loud snort.

 

“I’m not out of your league,” she scoffed, leaning all the way across the table and flicking Phil’s shoulder with one beautifully-manicured nail. “You’re really hot too, you know? Besides,” she added as she sat back in her chair, eyeing Phil up and down in a way that kindled that _want_ again, right down at the base of her spine, “I get to define my league for myself, thank you very much.”

 

Phil could only nod. Right. Right, of course. Dani wouldn’t be here, with Phil, if she didn’t want to be, right? 

 

“Now that we’ve got that out of the way,” Dani continued, shaking her hair back so that it rippled and glimmered in the low-slanting sun’s rays. “What would you like to eat?”

 

They ended up ordering the lamb tacos, which they followed up with something called “strawberries in the clouds” that was absolutely to-die-for. While they made quick work of their tacos, Dani circled back to their earlier conversation.

 

“Tell me about your YouTube videos,” she said and then took a huge bite of taco and stared pointedly at Phil as she chewed.

 

Phil swallowed her own bite of food and gathered her courage.

 

“They’re kind of stupid,” she began, but Dani forestalled her with a stern expression and a shake of the head.

 

“What are they about?” she asked around her mouthful.

 

“Just, like, ideas that I get. I mean, I used to make up weird stories about, like, aliens or otherworldly creatures, but now I mostly talk about myself and, just, things that have happened to me…” She trailed off, cringing as she thought back over her videos and compared them to Dani’s in her head. Dani was so funny and just looked so _good_ on camera. Phil had a dedicated following whose kind comments were what motivated her to keep going, but she knew she wasn’t really anything special when it came to the world of YouTube.

 

Dani reached for her glass—they were each on their second drink by now—and took a sip before she replied.

 

“Send me a link to your channel,” she said when she’d set her glass down again. “I’d love to see what you make.”

 

Phil nodded and then took another bite of taco, hoping that Dani would forget. Luckily, after that, Dani launched off onto a rant about _Fortnite_ , a topic that Phil felt much more comfortable with, and before she knew it, there were scattered stars twinkling outside their window and they were both licking the last bits of strawberry compote from their respective spoons. Phil couldn’t stop herself staring a bit at the loving way Dani’s tongue caressed the curved bowl of her spoon. Something pulled tight deep in the pit of her stomach as she watched, and she had to force her eyes away.

 

“Do you have any plans after this?” she found herself blurting as she gazed out the window, no longer seeing the gorgeous view below.

 

There was a brief pause before Dani answered, during which Phil didn’t so much as breathe.

 

“Nothing in particular,” came her reply, the tone casual.

 

“Want to, um, come over to mine?” Phil asked, then rushed to add, “I mean, we could play _Fortnite_ or, uh, just have a few more drinks that don’t cost £13 apiece.”

 

Another pause. Phil finally dared a glance back toward the other girl, and her stomach sank at the unmistakeable hesitance in her expression. She guessed things hadn’t been going quite as well as she had thought. She opened her mouth, on the verge of saying that maybe it would be better to just call it a night when Dani finally answered.

 

“Yeah, sure,” she said. “Just for a bit, though. I have work tomorrow.”

 

Silence fell between them as they settled their bill. Dani insisted on paying for all the drinks, though they went half and half on the food, just as Dani had suggested. Phil stole a final glance at the view as they stood and made to leave, trying to drink in as much of it as she could. Outside, the city of Manchester glittered in the early evening darkness, and Phil felt a tug of longing in her chest. Wouldn’t it be lovely, having the kind of life where she got to see views like this all the time? She shook her head. A place like this was a rare treat with an income like hers. She doubted she’d be coming back here again for a very long time.

 

She was still lost in that thought when they stepped into the lift, but she was pulled from it by the feeling of warm fingers intertwining with her own once again. Her eyes skittered to the side, and she saw Dani studying her from beneath dark lashes.

 

“If I come over to yours,” Dani murmured in a voice so low that Phil could barely hear it over the soft, saxophone-y music drifting from the speakers overhead, “we’re not gonna, you know, have sex or anything.”

 

Phil turned her head further to the side so that she could see the other woman better.

 

“I like you, and I think… I can see this going somewhere, but I don’t want to get your hopes up that, like, I’m coming to your place for—“

 

“No, no, of course not,” Phil cut her off as the lift came to a stop again on the ground floor. “Just _Fortnite_ and a couple of drinks is plenty for me.” And it was absolutely true. Phil just didn’t want Dani to go—not yet. Maybe not ever.

 

Dani’s face split into a smile as the lift dinged and the doors opened on the lobby once more.

 

“Good,” she said, and Phil felt her grip tighten for a second before she let go of Phil’s hand and stepped out of the lift.


	3. Wild

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Saturday

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you everyone who's read this fic! <3
> 
> My apologies for not replying to any comments yet, but feel free to drop by Twitter @Smartinis or Tumblr @transdimensional-void to tell me your thoughts. Next chapter on Thursday!

Morning came late on Saturday.

 

Somewhere out there the sun had risen, but great black clouds had rolled in sometime before dawn, obscuring the sunrise and the daylight and extending the night well into morning. Phil’s eyes cracked open, slow and aching, and she thought at first that the darkness of the room meant the sun wasn’t up yet. She almost rolled over and went back to sleep but then thought better of it. Might as well check the time.

 

Her temple gave a warning twinge as she forced her arm out from beneath the covers and over to her bedside stand. As she fumbled around for her phone, her stomach gave an unpleasant lurch, and she was suddenly reminded just how much she’d drunk last night.

 

“Nnngh,” she groaned just as her hand made contact with her mobile, knocking before she could get her fingers around it. A moment later, a loud clatter reverberated through the room, turning the twinge in her temple into a throb. “Ow,” she muttered.

 

“Mmmm,” someone said on the other side of her bed, and she froze.

 

There was someone else in her bed.

 

She wanted to roll over and look. The only problem was that her body felt like it had been crafted entirely of lead and then welded firmly to the bed beneath it. Every instinct warned her that the moment she moved, she was going to firmly regret it.

 

Instead of looking, she let her arm drop back down onto the bed, shut her eyes again, and tried to remember what had happened last night.

 

It came back slowly, in stops and starts.

 

There was a hotel. And a bar. There was the city of Manchester and a starry sky. There was food…and alcohol. A lot of alcohol. And—

 

_Dani_.

 

Right, right. She’d been out on her first date with Dani, but now she remembered leaving the hotel and how Dani had said they weren’t going to have sex that night. _Had they had sex last night??_ Crap, she couldn’t… Wait, no.

 

She remembered pushing open the door of her flat, the other girl following behind her at a distance that almost struck her as shy.

 

“It’s tiny, I know,” Phil had apologized as she waved around the small lounge, “but I quite like it here.”

 

“It’s cozy,” Dani had said, tossing a smile her way as she stood just inside the doorway and took in the room. Phil had been congratulating herself for actually taking the time yesterday to straighten up, vacuum, and dust. She’d spotted the wrinkled toe of one bright blue sock sticking out from beneath the sofa, but Dani hadn’t seemed to have noticed it yet.

 

“Come in,” she’d said, striding over to the sofa as casually as she could. “Can I get you anything? I think I’ve got rum and vodka. Maybe some cola to mix it with?” As she spoke, she’d used the side of one foot to nudge the sock fully underneath the sofa, keeping her eyes locked on Dani the entire time. _The Amazing Phil, Master of Misdirection, strikes again!_ she’d chuckled inwardly.

 

“Oh, rum and Coke sounds nice,” Dani had murmured, taking a few steps further into the lounge. “If you have Coke, I mean.”

 

“I think so,” Phil had replied, waving a hand at the sofa and then turning toward the attached kitchen. “Have a seat if you like. The remote is over there, if you wanna start up the TV and the PS4.”

 

Phil could remember the moment clearly now. Things had been awkward at first, with Dani quiet and looking a little uncomfortable, but five minutes into their first round of _Fortnite_ had found her half hanging off the edge of the sofa, white-knuckling a PlayStation controller, and all but screaming at Phil to _stop fucking around and avenge me already_!

 

Phil had, unfortunately (or…now that she thought about it, maybe it was fortunate after all) not managed to avenge Dani’s death at the hands of the other team and instead had herself been eliminated only seconds later.

 

“Forty-first place?” Dani had yelled, flinging out a hand to grab her drink from the side table, taking a long swig that left the rim of the glass smudged with her burgundy-colored lipstick, and then tossing her controller down on the cushion beside her. “I haven’t finished lower than twentieth in months!”

 

“Sorry?” Phil had said, unable to hold in a giggle. “We could go again?”

 

The other girl had turned a glare on her that was belied by the twinkle in her dark eyes.

 

“Bloody right we’re going again,” she’d declared, snatching up her controller and turning back toward the screen with a martial light in her eye.

 

Phil’s lips curled into a smile against her pillow now as she recalled what had followed. Dani had screamed and yelled and cursed (and, maybe, possibly Phil had done some screaming, yelling, and cursing of her own) and somehow managed to get them into first place sometime around the eleventh or twelfth round. By then, they’d both had at least a couple of rum and Cokes, and when they’d finally taken out their last two competitors, they’d both leapt off the sofa, shrieking and hugging and jumping up and down. Phil wouldn’t be surprised to find out that the neighbors had put in a noise complaint.

 

“You did it!” Phil had cried, throwing her arms around Dani’s neck.

 

“God damn right I did!” Dani had cried back, her arms squeezing around Phil’s middle and yanking her in right against her body. Phil remembered the sweet scent of perfume and shampoo and the crisp softness of curls brushing against her cheek. She remembered her heart pounding in her chest and in her ears and deep in her abdomen. And she remembered closing her eyes and turning her head and finding that Dani had done the same, finding the warmth of Dani’s lips pressed against her own and her breath moist and tickling against her skin.

 

Then there had been hands, clutching at her shirt, fingers digging into her sides. There had been soft moans and sighs. There had been the press of breasts against her chest, the seductive slide of a knee against the inside of her own knee.

 

By mutual, unspoken agreement, they’d both sunk back down onto the sofa, unwilling to untangle themselves or stop exploring the way their lips fit together almost as though they’d been made for this.

 

Phil could still feel Dani’s tongue between her lips, feel her fingers wedged into her hair, feel the heave of her chest as she seemed to struggle with breathing just as much as Phil was. She thought she could even still taste her.

 

She swallowed, scrunching her eyes up before cranking them open again. _Shit_.

 

Dani let out another little moan beside her, so Phil pushed herself up on her forearms, just enough to turn her head to the side and search for her bedmate. Just as she’d feared, even those slight movements sent a wave of pain sloshing through her head. Ugh. She was wickedly hung over.

 

Dani was there, though, curled up on the other side of the bed, duvet clutched tight around her shoulders and one of Phil’s pillows half-covering her face. From what Phil could see in the shadowy space beneath, the other girl’s eyes were still shut.

 

Phil wasn’t entirely sure how long they’d spent on the sofa last night, though she distinctly recalled that it hadn’t taken very long for Dani to end up on her back with Phil bent over her, their bodies pressed together from cheek to toe. She also distinctly recalled how that had felt, Dani’s body, warm and soft and yielding and moving against hers in a way that made Phil ache to somehow have her even closer.

 

Across the bed, Dani’s eyes slid slowly open, aimless for a moment until they focused on Phil.

 

Phil responded with a tentative smile that grew wider when it was answered by a soft breath of laughter from the other girl.

 

“‘Morning,” she murmured.

 

“‘Morning,” Phil said back and then winced as the sound of her own voice seemed to echo inside her head like the clang of an alarm bell.

 

Dani let out another soft laugh.

 

“Hung over?”

 

Phil shut her eyes and groaned an affirmative noise.

 

“Me too, a bit,” she heard Dani say. Then, “What time is it?”

 

Phil made a gesture that was meant to be a shrug, though she wasn’t sure just how successful it was.

 

“Knocked m’phone on the floor,” she slurred into her pillow.

 

“Ugh,” the other girl grumbled, though there was no sting in it. “Utterly useless.”

 

She heard rustling sounds and felt the duvet shift around her, though she didn’t open her eyes. Then she heard the click of fingernails tapping at a mobile’s screen. Then a pause.

 

“Fuck.”

 

Phil’s eyes struggled open again.

 

“What’s wrong?”

 

“It’s already 10:00 in the bloody morning,” Dani moaned, tossing her phone down on the mattress between them and shoving the pillow off her head. Phil watched as she pushed herself up off the bed with one long, bare arm (wait…she’d been wearing long sleeves last night, hadn’t she?) and then reached up to ruffle her tumbled curls.

 

With Dani’s face no longer hidden beneath the pillow, Phil could now see that she’d washed off all the makeup she’d been wearing last night. She couldn’t help but stare. Dani looked like a completely different person without her makeup on. Her cheeks had this rosy flush along their outer edges and there were moles scattered here there: two dotted on her left cheek right beside where her dimple formed, a couple more on the apple of her right cheek, one up near her hairline. Her eyelashes were still long, thick, and dark, but her eyes looked softer, her lips a paler, more vulnerable pink.

 

Phil decided that she liked seeing Dani this way, so different from how she usually presented herself to the world. It felt as though she’d let her guard down for Phil.

 

She didn’t get to look for long, though, because Dani was already tossing the duvet aside and sliding out of bed. Now, Phil could properly see what she was wearing: one of Phil’s old t-shirts and a pair of her pajama bottoms, the ones with Star Wars characters all over them. Phil’s heart gave a huge, galloping thump at the sight. Dani was wearing her clothes.

 

“Sorry, uh, where’s your bathroom again? I don’t—“ Dani was saying, one hand rising to rub at her forehead.

 

Phil lifted an arm and gestured across the room, toward the door into the en suite. She was definitely still staring, but Dani seemed too distracted to have noticed.

 

“Thanks,” she mumbled and then dashed over and disappeared behind the bathroom door.

 

Seeing the pajama bottoms had jogged Phil’s memory once again. She recalled, now, digging them out of her chest of drawers along with the t-shirt, thrusting them out toward Dani, and then turning her back to give the other girl some privacy as she changed.

 

And then all the rest of it came flooding back to her.

 

They’d been on the sofa, Dani’s body wedged beneath her, Dani’s knees gripped around Phil’s thighs and her hips shoved up to meet Phil’s as they ground down, and Phil’s lips had been discovering exactly how to press themselves against Dani’s throat to make her moan Phil’s name in that absolutely wrecked voice. Phil had been on the verge of suggesting they move things off the sofa and into her bedroom, but she’d been distracted by a niggling thought in the back of her mind.

 

Hadn’t Dani said that she didn’t want to have sex with Phil tonight?

 

Phil remembered pulling away, the annoyed huff of breath Dani had let out when she’d realized Phil wasn’t kissing her anymore. She remembered how Dani had looked, laid out on her sofa, curls spread wild across the cushions, lips wet and swollen, eyes shaded by half-lowered lids, chest heaving with each panting breath. She’d wanted so much to keep going, to finish her lips’ exploration of Dani’s throat, let them make their way down to her chest, to her breasts, her stomach, and even further.

 

“Wait,” she’d murmured, her tone apologetic. “Maybe we shouldn’t…”

 

Dani had blinked at her for a while, looking dazed, before her eyelids had dropped fully shut and she’d let out a gusting sigh.

 

“Yeah,” she’d said. “Yeah, you’re right. We should stop.”

 

“Sorry,” Phil had whispered, biting her lip. “It’s just you said, earlier—“

 

“I did,” Dani had nodded, eyes still closed. “And I meant it. I don’t want to…you know, not until we’ve had The Talk.”

 

It had been Phil’s turn to blink in confusion.

 

“The talk?”

 

Dani had nodded and opened her eyes again, suddenly looking very tired. It had been well past midnight by then, and they’d both worked full shifts that day.

 

“You know, The Sex Talk. The I-have-bits-I’m-not-sure-you’re-comfortable-with Talk.”

 

“Oh,” Phil had said. “That.”

 

“Yeah,” Dani had sighed. “That.”

 

Phil’s brain had been too slow and alcohol-soaked, and it had taken her a long time to realize she should say something reassuring. By the time it occurred to her, Dani had already been wriggling out from under her and pushing herself upright.

 

“I’m comfortable with your bits,” was what her brain had come up with.

 

Dani had paused in her movements to turn a raised eyebrow on Phil.

 

“I mean,” Phil had flushed, her drunken brain trying its best to cobble together a coherent idea from the jumble of her thoughts. “I’ve never, uh, seen a penis in person before, but, you know, lesbian,” she’d paused to wave a hand toward herself, “hot girl,” she’d said, turning the hand toward Dani. 

 

Dani’s other eyebrow had gone up at that.

 

“You’ve really never seen a penis before?”

 

Phil’s face had gone redder.

 

“In pictures and stuff,” she’d mumbled. “Just not, you know….live.”

 

“Huh,” Dani had said, looking thoughtful. “Well, if it makes you feel any better, I’ve never dated a cis lesbian before. I mean, uh, you are cis, right?”

 

Phil had nodded.

 

A pregnant silence had fallen between them, which Dani had finally broken by finishing her slide out from underneath Phil. She’d sat up all the way, and Phil had sat back, and then the two of them had both looked toward each other, their eyes making tentative contact.

 

Dani had smiled, and Phil had smiled back.

 

“So,” Phil had said. “Uh, no sex tonight, but…,” she’d let her smile deepen, “maybe another time?”

 

“May-be,” Dani had replied, drawing out the word in a way that Phil had read as coy. “Let’s talk about it again when we’re sober.” She’d pulled out her phone then, grimacing when she checked the time. “I didn’t realize it had got so late.”

 

“Oh, do you need me to call you a cab or an Uber or something?” 

 

Dani’s face had closed up at that, all of her earlier discomfort flooding back.

 

“I don’t…” she’d muttered, frowning down at the black screen of her phone, “I don’t like going outside this late at night. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have let it get this late.”

 

“Why don’t you stay the night?” Phil had blurted.

 

Dani had glanced over at that, lips tensed as though preparing themselves to utter something unpleasant. Then they’d seemed to relax and Dani’s shoulders had drooped a little.

 

“You don’t mind?” she’d asked, her expression still uncertain. “I _can_ call an Uber. It’s just… I just get nervous, you know, around strangers at night.”

 

“Just stay,” Phil had said, getting to her feet and then needing a moment to steady herself on the arm of the sofa. “I’ll get you some pajamas. You can have a shower too, if you want—“

 

“That’s all right,” Dani had said, wrapping her arms around herself and settling back into the sofa cushions. “I need to be up early in the morning anyway. I can take the sofa—“

 

“Nah, I’ve got a queen-sized. Plenty of room,” Phil had said, shaking her head before shuffling off toward her bedroom. “If you’re okay with that, at least,” she’d cast back over her shoulder as an afterthought.

 

Dani hadn’t answered right away, but a moment later, she’d stood from the sofa and padded after Phil, her stockinged feet making soft shushing noises against Phil’s laminate flooring. She’d stood in the doorway of Phil’s bedroom and watched while she fished out the pajamas, and when Phil had held them out toward her, she’d finally stepped inside.

 

Next door, the toilet flushed, and Phil let out a groaning sigh before pushing herself fully upright. She wished she could remember more about what it had felt like to sleep next to Dani. She had a hazy memory of sliding beneath the covers and turning off the light, but after that, nothing. She must have passed out pretty quickly.

 

By the time Dani emerged from the bathroom, Phil had brought two glasses of water and some painkillers from the kitchen. She held one of the glasses out toward Dani.

 

“Are you late for something?” she asked as the other girl took the glass and murmured her thanks.

 

Dani sighed, sipped at the water, and then took the capsules Phil was holding out to her.

 

“Is this paracetamol?” she asked, frowning down at them.

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Good,” she said and then swallowed them down before finally answering Phil’s question. “I had a whole filming schedule planned for today that’s kinda shot now, but I’m not, like, missing an important meeting or something.”

 

“Oops,” Phil said. She paused for a moment to swallow her own pills. “But does that mean you have time for breakfast?”

 

A smile crept up onto Dani’s face, and then she rolled her eyes toward the ceiling with another big sigh.

 

“Well, if you insist.”

 

Dani curled up on the sofa with her phone—still in Phil’s clothes, she noted—while Phil busied herself whipping up scrambled eggs, toast, and coffee in the kitchen. It was kind of weird, she mused as she moved the eggs around in the pan with a spatula, that she and Dani had only just had their first date last night, hadn’t got any further than making out on the sofa, yet somehow Dani scrolling social media in her lounge while she cooked them breakfast felt like the most natural thing in the world.

 

Once the food was ready, they sat side-by-side on the sofa, and Phil put on the TV just to have something on in the background. It was some news show she didn’t really care about, so she turned the volume down low.

 

“When you gonna show me your YouTube channel?” Dani asked when she’d set the remote down again. 

 

Phil felt her ears flush red, and she hunched further over her plate.

 

“I hoped you’d forgotten,” she grumbled.

 

“Nope,” came Dani’s cheerful voice. “I’m going to keep reminding you to send me the link, so you can either do it now or later. The choice is yours.”

 

Phil shoveled another forkful of egg into her mouth and mumbled an answer.

 

“Sorry?”

 

“I’ll send it to you later,” she repeated. “If you watch my videos in front of me, I might die of cringe.”

 

“Well, we can’t have you dying, I suppose,” Dani conceded.

 

They chatted a bit more over the rest of their breakfast, about the tutorial Dani had been planning to film today, about how much improvement Phil’s _Fortnite_ skills needed, about how disappointed they both were that they’d slept through this morning’s thunderstorm.

 

“Hey,” Dani said after Phil had come back from carrying both their plates to the kitchen. “So, about last night…”

 

Phil paused before sitting down, taking in the way Dani was shoved all the way back into one corner of the sofa with her knees up and her arms wrapped around them. Phil felt a bit like an invading force laying siege to a walled city as she settled herself at the other end of the sofa.

 

“You mean when we got a little too drunk and a little carried away and ended up making out right here on this very sofa?” Phil asked, picking up her coffee mug but just holding it between her hands.

 

“Yeah, I mean that,” Dani said, rewarding Phil with a tiny laugh, though her expression immediately turned serious again. “And also when I told you that we needed to have a talk before things went any further.”

 

“I meant what I said,” Phil stated, turning the coffee cup first one way and then the other between her restless hands. “I like you a lot, and last night,” she felt her face flushing yet again, “It felt really good. I’d, uh, like to find out what comes next, sometime.”

 

Dani was silent for a while, arms still wrapped tight around her knees. Her gaze had drifted over toward the talking heads on the TV screen. Phil noticed her bare feet then, wedged against the edge of a sofa cushion. Her toenails were painted forest green.

 

“I never have sex with people on the first date,” Dani said suddenly, her voice very soft, “or the second or the third. It’s just a rule I have.”

 

“That’s okay,” Phil assured her. “We can take it slow.”

 

“I don’t want to take it slow,” Dani replied at once. She finally ripped her gaze away from the TV, turning pained eyes on Phil again. “With you, for some reason, I seem to want everything right away.” Her lips curled up in a smile that wobbled around the edges.

 

Phil couldn’t help smiling in return, heat spilling down her neck and chest and right to the core of her.

 

“Me too,” she said. She bit her lip, steeled herself, and continued, “But, I’d guess you have your rule for a reason. I don’t mind waiting, you know. Not for you.”

 

Dani nodded, nibbled at her lower lip, and looked away. Phil didn’t miss the way her cheeks had turned a brilliant shade of pink.

 

“I’d better go soon,” she murmured and pushed herself up off the sofa. “Do you mind if I—?” and she gestured toward Phil’s room.

 

“Go on then,” Phil said, and shooed her off with a reassuring smile. Dani paused as she passed Phil where she was still sat on the sofa, laying her hand on Phil’s shoulder for just a moment before disappearing off into the bedroom.

 

Once she was gone, Phil busied herself seeing about their dirty breakfast dishes.

 

“Ugh, second-day clothes,” Dani muttered when she emerged, once more draped in her black dress and tights. Phil noticed that she was wearing makeup again as well, though a lot less than she’d had on yesterday. To Phil’s inexperienced eye, it looked like she’d just put on a bit of lipstick and maybe some mascara, though she suspected there was a bit more to it than that.

 

Phil stood from the sofa where she’d plopped back down after finishing the dishes, suddenly very aware of the fact that she was still in her night shirt and shorts. Dani didn’t seem to care, though. She walked straight over to Phil and reached down for her hand.

 

“Thanks for letting me stay,” she murmured, and before Phil could give her a ‘you’re welcome’ back, Dani was leaning in to press her lips gently against Phil’s. It was a brief kiss, just enough to leave Phil leaning forward, chasing after more.

 

“You’re welcome,” she said when she’d leaned back again, blushing. “I had a really good time.”

 

“Me too,” Dani replied, letting go of her hand and stepping back. “See you again soon?”

 

Phil was caught off guard by the uncertain waver in Dani’s voice. As far as Phil was concerned, if anyone was going to back out at this point, it would be Dani.

 

“Very soon, I hope,” Phil said.

 

Dani’s eyes twinkled, and she leaned in close again and whispered, “Don’t forget to send me the link to your channel.”

 

Then she stepped back and, with a waggle of her fingers, she was gone.

 

Phil waited until she was absolutely sure enough time had passed for Dani to have got on the bus or in a taxi or Uber. Then she pulled up Instagram—Why had they still not exchanged some other mode of contact? She was going to ask, the next time there was a good opportunity—tapped on her messages, and then, taking a deep breath, typed out the link to her YouTube channel.

 

Her finger hovered over the send button without pressing it for long enough that the screen went black and she had to press the home button to wake her phone back up. Then, she took a deep breath and pressed it.

 

For a long time, YouTube had been something Phil did in secret. She’d loved making films, ever since she was twelve and had organized a group of neighborhood friends to create the ultra-low budget thriller “The Madness of Matthew Swiatczak.” Shortly after that, she’d sent off for a cheap little video camera that was being given away as a promotional item from the cereal brand her mum bought, and not too long after that, she’d discovered YouTube. Her first YouTube video had been filmed quietly in her room when her parents and brother were all out. She had been barely a teenager at the time, and she’d had a pretty good inkling that her parents wouldn’t approve.

 

She hadn’t cared, though. Finally, finally, she had found a home for all of the weird and wonderful ideas that seemed to constantly be cropping up inside her head. Honestly, she didn’t care that barely anyone had watched her videos at first. That wasn’t why she made them. 

 

The first person to find out about her channel was her brother. Fortunately, by the time he stumbled across her sat on her bed filming, she was already 16, so when he went straight to their parents, they were wary but perhaps more open to the idea than they might have been back when she was just starting out—especially when she’d shown them a few of her videos and they’d realized it was generally harmless.

 

No one outside her family had known about her channel for years after that, though, mostly because she just wasn’t that big of a deal. Even when YouTube had started to get big and her channel had grown along with it, she’d remained relatively unknown. She now got just enough views to keep her channel monetized.

 

The first non-Lester that Phil had told about her channel had been her first girlfriend at university, Kate. She’d been a fellow English student, and all of their conversations about the importance of having a creative outlet had finally convinced Phil it would be safe to show her her channel. Kate had politely sat through a couple of Phil’s videos, offered her tepid praise, and then jumped at the first opportunity to change the conversation. 

 

It had taken Phil several months to work up the courage to confront her about it, and she’d confessed that she just didn’t think Phil’s videos were very good. They were silly and kind of strange, and anyway, what was Phil’s message? What was she trying to communicate to her audience? Was there even any point to her videos? Why didn’t she talk about important stuff, like LGBT+ issues or global warming or something?

 

Needless to say, their relationship hadn’t survived the conversation. It wasn’t that Phil had been angry or offended. She’d been more heartbroken than anything. After she and Kate broke up, Phil had been on the verge of quitting YouTube entirely, but when she’d sat down to write out the script for a good-bye video, an email had popped into her inbox with a new comment on one of her videos: “This is so fun and creative! I love it! I hope you make a lot more.”

 

After that, Phil had come to a decision—no one but her family and her viewers needed to know about her YouTube channel because no one else’s opinions mattered.

 

Still, Kate’s criticisms had lingered in her mind. Maybe she really did need to consider what message she was sending her audience. She had a platform, after all, however small it was. Was it wrong of her not to use it to push important issues?

 

For nearly a year, she’d struggled to write the script, coming out to her audience as a lesbian and announcing that she was going to talk more about issues affecting lesbians and the LGBT+ community in general. No matter how much effort she put into it, though, it never sounded quite right. Though the words and the writing were all her own, none of it really sounded like _her_.

 

Her phone buzzed against her palm, and she looked down at the screen to seen Dani’s reply glowing there.

 

_i love your videos_

 

Phil’s heart dropped into her stomach, and her phone buzzed again and then again.

 

_you just have this sort of presence on camera_

 

_i can’t describe it_

 

Phil thought she felt tears pricking at her eyes. Oh. Dani liked her videos. Dani had got the link Phil had sent her and opened it immediately and watched Phil’s videos right then and there, on the bus or in her taxi or wherever. Her phone buzzed again.

 

_you have 80,000 subscribers??? 80k is NOT “a few thousand” you ABSOLUTE SPORK_

 

Phil’s face cracked into a smile. Oh, god. Dani actually liked her videos.

 

_which ones did you watch?_ , she finally managed to type back.

 

_the most recent one, reacting to your old videos. and then the one with the letter from your younger self. younger phil seems really fun. wish i’d had a chance to meet her :P_

 

_she was a bit of an idiot, but she meant well_

 

_sounds like nothing’s changed?_

 

_shut up! i am far more than a bit of an idiot nowadays, thank you very much_

 

_no, you shut up. you’re not an idiot at all, you dingbat_

 

_quacksack_

 

_give a dog a bone_

 

Phil snorted and spluttered and was generally very glad that neither Dani nor anyone else was around to hear the ridiculous noise. She was still grinning from ear to ear, her heart pounding and her thoughts whirling. Dani liked her videos.

 

_so_ , her phone buzzed as the word popped up on the screen.

 

_when do you want to meet up again?_

 

 


	4. BEAUTIFUL

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I think you're fucking beautiful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for your patience! I know this chapter is up later than I originally intended, but on the bright side, there is now going to be an extra chapter.
> 
> As usual, endless thanks to everyone who's read, kudos'ed, commented, messaged me on Tumblr or Twitter. You're all the real MVPs.
> 
> Next chapter on Sunday! :)

“I ran into Cara the other day at Marks and Spencer,” Phil’s mum said the following day, apropos of nothing, as they were finishing up their Sunday roast. Since moving to Manchester, Phil had made a habit of having dinner with her parents every Sunday. It was a nice tradition, and one that had made her feel a little less lonely.

 

Phil paused mid-bite to give her mother a puzzled look over her heaping spoonful of mashed potato.

 

“You saw…Cara?” she repeated.

 

“Yes, you remember, that pretty blonde you dated back in sixth form.”

 

“I remember,” Phil said and then proceeded to fill her mouth with potato as her mum told her all about how her ex-girlfriend was just as pretty as ever, even if she had unfortunately colored her hair pink, the silly thing, and she was getting her degree in law, wasn’t that impressive?

 

“Mm hmm,” Phil mumbled around her mashed potato, hoping her mother wasn’t going where she thought she was going with this.

 

Her hopes were immediately dashed.

 

“Anyway, she said she would absolutely _love_ to catch up with you sometime, so I gave her yournew mobile number—“

 

“Mu-um,” Phil groaned. 

 

“You don’t have to talk to her, even if she calls,” Mrs. Lester pointed out, spearing her last bite of roast. “It’s just, you haven’t been seeing _anyone_ since you came back from York, dear, not even any friends. I hate to see you so mopey. I know things didn’t work out with Jill, but—“

 

“Who says I haven’t been seeing anyone?” Phil demanded. She noticed her dad finally looking up from where he had been intently studying his plate.

 

A brief stillness fell over Phil’s mum before she set down her fork.

 

“Well, you certainly haven’t mentioned anyone,” she said, tilting her head in clear invitation. Most of the time, Phil really loved the fact that she and her parents were so close, but every now and then she was reminded that the closeness was a double-edged sword.

 

“Uh, well, we only just had our first date on Friday,” Phil mumbled and then shoved in another huge mouthful of potato.

 

Her mother’s reaction was not at all what she’d expected. Across the table, Mrs. Lester sat up straighter, her face lighting up with a huge grin, and she shot an exultant look over toward her husband.

 

“Kathryn—“ he expostulated, rolling his eyes, though there was a smile hovering about his lips too.

 

“I told you so,” Phil’s mum crowed, despite her husband’s pre-emptive objection.

 

“What?” Phil frowned, glancing between them. “You told him what?”

 

“Your mother,” Mr. Lester said, eyeing said woman with a speaking look, “has been convinced for weeks now that you were seeing someone new, so despite what she says, she did not _tell me so._ You didn’t, Kath. She just said they only went on their first date two days ago.”

 

Phil’s whole body felt like it was on fire, she was blushing so hard. How in the _world_ had her mother known?

 

Across the table, her mum was smiling like the cat that got the cream.

 

“Mothers just know,” she stated and reached for her fork again. “So, tell me about this girl. What’s her name? How did you meet?”

 

“Um, Dani,” Phil said when she’d gathered her scattered wits again. “She works in the M•A•C Store at the shopping center, and, uh, yeah I just ran into her one day on my break, and we hit it off.”

 

“At the M•A•C Store?” Mrs. Lester repeated, looking thoughtful. “So she does makeup?”  


“Yep,” Phil said, “and YouTube too. She’s actually pretty big, compared to me, at least.”

 

“Any chance we’ll meet her?” her dad interjected then, and Phil’s blush came rushing right back.

 

“We’ll see,” she muttered, reaching for her glass and hoping that if she didn’t feed the conversation any further, it would wither and die. It wasn’t that she wasn’t practically dying to talk to someone about Dani and how wonderful she was. It was just that her parents weren’t the ones she wanted to gush to. Because her parents would have _expectations_. They always did, every time she started a new relationship. They’d had really high hopes for her and Jill, and she suspected her mum was more disappointed about the end of their relationship than either of them had been. Ever since it had become clear that Martyn had zero intention of settling down and starting a family, Phil’s parents had all their hopes for grandchildren pinned on her.

 

“Can we see one of her videos?” her mum asked after a brief pause.

 

“Uh,” Phil said. “Maybe another time.”

 

Fortunately, her parents seemed to take the hint and dropped it after that. She was pretty sure it was going to come up again, though, probably at next week’s Sunday dinner. Oh, well. She’d cross that bridge when she came to it.

 

On the bus ride home, as she was scrolling through Twitter, a banner popped up at the top of her screen with a new Instagram message from Dani.

 

_might i interest you in some remote cooperative fortnite-ing on this fine sunday?_

 

Phil’s face spread wide in a grin, and she almost couldn’t answer “yes!!!!!!” quickly enough.

 

Almost as an afterthought, she sent through a “btw can we exchange phone numbers now?” too.

 

The message sat through almost two whole bus stops before finally the little bubble at the bottom popped up showing that Dani was replying.

 

_ofc!_ was followed by a phone number and then nothing else. Phil saved the number to her phone, creating a new contact for Dani with a little pink heart emoji next to it (the one with the sparkly stars around it). Then she opened the Messages app and typed out a text to her brand new contact.

 

_hello! this is phil x_

 

There was a long enough pause that when Phil finally got a response, she was already stood by the bus doors, preparing to get down at the next stop.

 

_nice to meet you, phil! i’m dani :*_

 

“Dork,” Phil muttered under her breath as she tried to hide her grin from the nosy stares of her fellow passengers. The bus came to a stop then, so she locked her phone and shoved it in her pocket before getting down and beginning the quick walk home.

 

She didn’t pull her phone out again until she was inside, and when she did, she saw that she had a couple of new texts.

 

_sorry i didn’t give you my number before. i’ve had some stalker issues in the past so i’m just extra cautious about getting to know people before i give it out_

 

_not that i ever thought you were a stalker_

 

_i mean you did creepily stare at me from starbucks for almost a month but_

 

“Oh my god,” Phil said to her empty lounge as she chucked off her shoes and socks and stumbled over to her sofa.

 

_i wasn’t creepy!!!!_

 

_was i?_

 

She had her PS4 on and was loading _Fortnite Battle Royale_ before she got Dani’s reply.

 

_not TOO creepy_

 

_you’re too adorable to be creepy anyway_

 

Phil stared at the message for a long time, especially at that one word “adorable,” until finally she heard Dani’s voice suddenly loud and close inside her headset.

 

“All right, creeper, let’s kick some battle royale ass!”

 

 

 

 

As it turned out, now that they’d started, neither of them seemed able to stop texting the other, and texting led to offers of “swinging by starbucks, want something?” and “team up with me again on fortnite when we get home?” Between Sunday and Thursday—the next day that their schedules aligned to allow them to go out together for their second date—they texted one another nearly non-stop and played games together remotely three nights out of the four.

 

On Monday, Dani’s tutorial finally went up, a sort of summery sunset eye look based on some new palette that had just come out. Phil watched it three times back-to-back, so mesmerized by the way Dani’s hands moved as they stroked the brushes over her eyelids that even by the end of the third watch-through, she’d neglected to notice the name of the brand.

 

_that eyeshadow look was so cool!!! how do you even do that? it was like magic_ , she texted her when she’d managed to stop herself watching it a fourth time.

 

_that’s it_ , Dani’s prompt response came back, _i’ve got magic hands_. She’d added a smirk emoji, and suddenly Phil’s mind was conjuring up all sorts of naughty scenarios involving Dani’s hands.

 

On Tuesday, Phil swung by the M•A•C Store on her break to pick Dani up for an impromptu lunch together but found her still finishing up with a potential customer. She cast Phil a little wave from the back of the store and held up three fingers. Phil waved back and nodded. She could browse the shelves and look interested for three minutes.

 

“Ahem,” someone behind her cleared their throat very loudly, making Phil jump and nearly drop the tube of lipgloss? (eyeliner? something?) that she’d idly picked up while she waited for Dani to go on break. She just managed to catch it before it clattered on the floor, where it probably would have broken and she would have had to pay for yet another make-up item she was never going to use.

 

She set the tube back on the shelf and then turned around to see who was behind her. She found Ryan stood there, lips pulled tight in an almost-smile. They raised one magenta-nailed hand and waved.

 

She ducked her head in a little nod of greeting.

 

“Hi.”

 

“Hey,” Ryan said, their eyes dropping to gaze down at their shoes. They were wearing black combat boots. “How are you?”

 

“I’m fine,” Phil said, suddenly very conscious of the fact that she was dressed in her wrinkled work shirt and a pair of scuffed old trainers. “And you?”

 

“Good,” they said, their eyes flicking up to her face and then down again. “I, uh, I wanted to apologize.”

 

Phil blinked and felt a confused frown pull her forehead into wrinkles.

 

“Apologize?” she asked.

 

They nodded and reached a hand up to run their fingers through their fine, blonde hair.

 

“Yeah,” they said, finally looking up and meeting her eye. “It has been brought to my attention that threatening you the first time we met was, perhaps, not the best way to introduce myself.”

 

“Oh,” Phil said, feeling the tension between her shoulders ease a bit. “That’s okay. I know it was just because you care about Dani and all.”

 

They nodded, their lips sliding to the side in a sort of grimace.

 

“Yeah, and she seems to care about _you_ , so…” They finished up the sentence with a shrug, but Phil was blushing too much to notice. 

 

Had Dani told Ryan that she _cared_ about her?

 

“I mean, we are kind of overprotective of her,” Ryan was continuing, probably because Phil wasn’t replying. She couldn’t yet, not until her brain had finished processing that last sentence. “Sometimes it seems like we’re the closest thing to family she has, now that her gran’s gone.”

 

That caught Phil’s attention. It hadn’t escaped her notice that as much as Dani talked about her current life and her future plans, she spoke very little about her past, and about her family? Nothing at all.

 

“Her gran?” 

 

Ryan’s eyes darted toward Dani, who was now ringing her customer up, and then back to Phil.

 

“It’s probably something she should tell you about herself,” they said with a small, apologetic smile on their shiny, pale lips. “But, yeah, her gran passed away last year.”

 

Phil nodded and couldn’t help casting her own speculative glance in Dani’s direction.

 

“Thanks,” she said when she’d turned her attention back to Ryan. “For the apology, I mean.”

 

“You’re welcome,” they replied, their face lighting up in a sunny expression. “I’m sure I’ll be seeing you around again soon.” And then they wafted away to intercept someone who had just wandered in from the shopping center.

 

Dani was already hurrying over, having doffed her work smock to reveal her fitted black top and short, flowy black skirt.

 

“Ready to go?” she asked, nodding her head toward the Starbucks just a few steps away. Phil noticed that she was wearing her hair down today, though she had it half-pulled back with a clip of some sort. Her curls were looking extra-full, and the way they spread themselves over her shoulders made Phil suddenly remember how they had looked splayed out on her sofa cushions last Friday.

 

“Uh, yeah, let’s go,” she said, turning away quickly to hide her blush. As they made their way over to Starbucks, she shoved the conversation with Ryan to the back of her mind. They were right, after all. It was the kind of thing she would just have to wait for Dani to decide to tell her about herself.

 

 

 

Their second date, which Phil fully acknowledged was their second date only in the strictest sense of the word, ended up being far less fancy than the first one, largely because this time Phil had been the one to choose the venue. On Thursday, when they both worked a morning shift, they met up in the early afternoon to catch a matinee showing of the summer’s blockbuster action film. They shared a huge tub of popcorn, and Phil was relieved to discover that Dani wasn’t the sort to lean over and whisper in the middle of the movie. She absolutely hated when people talked during movies. Much as she liked Dani, it might have been a deal-breaker if she’d turned out to be one of those.

 

“Five out of five stars!” Dani exclaimed as soon as the end credits began rolling. All around them, people began standing and collecting their belongings, but with a happy smile Phil realized that neither she nor Dani had made any move to leave their seats. It seemed they were compatible that way as well.

 

“Six out of five stars,” Phil corrected her, glancing down into the empty popcorn tub and frowning when she saw only unpopped kernels lying at the bottom. Dani’s hand snaked into view, grabbed one of the kernels, and then carried it up to her mouth.

 

“Eight out of five stars, and that’s my final offer,” she said before slipping the kernel between her teeth and biting down.

 

“You really eat those?” Phil asked, staring in disbelief as the other girl happily crunched away.

 

“Best part of the whole popcorn experience,” Dani replied with a solemn expression once she’d crunched the kernel into oblivion.

 

Phil shook her head but mused that it actually worked out pretty well this way. Phil was there to eat the popcorn (okay, maybe Dani had eaten a lot of that too), and Dani to take care of the leftover kernels at the end.

 

They stayed to watch all of the credits while discussing all of the things they’d liked about the film—the cool special effects (and didn’t Phil just love getting to show off a bit of her specialized knowledge in that area), the heart-pounding score, the zingy one-liners. There were ushers sweeping their way through the sticky aisles, eyeing them pointedly, by the time they finally stood from their seats.

 

They both wanted to stop by the toilets, and Phil ended up waiting outside for Dani to finish up. When she reappeared, her hand went at once for Phil’s, and hands clasped together, they headed out of the cinema.

 

They emerged from the building shortly before sunset, and Phil noticed that as they made their way over toward the bus stops, Dani didn’t let go of her hand. Though Phil had never been to Dani’s flat before, she knew that it was in a part of the city pretty far distant from where Phil herself lived. There was no way Dani took the same bus home that she did.

 

So, it wasn’t totally out of the blue when Dani tugged Phil toward a different bus stop than her usual one and asked, “Wanna come over to mine?”

 

Phil took her time, letting the moment sink in, letting it sit inside her and grow into a fluttery excitement in the pit of her stomach.

 

“Yeah, I’d really like that,” she finally replied, taking in the gentle shine of Dani’s eyes in the late, golden sunlight.

 

Dani’s lips curved into a smile and she tugged Phil’s hand again.

 

“This way.”

 

 

 

Dani’s flat was both smaller and much tidier than Phil had been expecting--not that she’d expected Dani to be messy. She just hadn’t expected everything to look quite so pristine. And well-decorated. And monochrome. Frankly, it looked like something out of a trendy furniture catalogue rather than someone’s actual home.

 

She didn’t waste too much time focusing on the decor, though, because within moments of stepping through the front door, Dani was guiding her over to the sofa and gesturing for her to sit.

 

“Want something to drink?” she asked as she moved off through a doorway that Phil assumed led into the kitchen. “I’ve got Ribena, Coke, orange juice—“

 

“Ribena is good,” Phil called as she sank down onto the sleek-lined grey sofa. She darted a quick look around, taking in the huge smart TV, the PS4, Switch, Wii U, blu-ray player, and Roku tucked neatly inside the glass-fronted TV stand, the Tetris lamp next to the fireplace, and the silver subscribe button hung above the mantelpiece next to an ornately-framed mirror.

 

“Here you go!”

 

She turned back around to find Dani setting two glasses of purplish liquid on the low-slung coffee table before she settled herself at the opposite end of the sofa from Phil. Phil itched to move closer, but something about the set of Dani’s shoulders told her she’d created that distance intentionally.

 

“I thought maybe we could have that talk we couldn’t have last time because we were too drunk,” Dani said when she’d picked up her glass of Ribena and balanced it on one jean-clad knee. She was wearing black skinny jeans today, along with a black crop top that left just the slightest strip of skin exposed above the waist of her jeans. Phil had been wondering all afternoon how Dani might respond if she ran her fingertips across that strip of skin.

 

Then Dani’s words sank in, and Phil’s eyes flew at once to her face.

 

“Yeah?” she asked after a moment, her heart suddenly in her throat.

 

Dani smiled her answer, though there was a tightness around her lips that Phil thought might be a warning.

 

“You were right,” she said then, “that there’s a reason for my rule.”

 

She paused and took a sip of her drink, her eyes falling from Phil’s face. Phil waited.

 

“I need to get to know people before I have sex with them,” she continued, still staring over at the shaggy, grey rug covering the pale wood of the floor. “For one thing, I don’t want to find out that someone isn’t okay with me having a penis after they’ve already stuck their hand down my pants.”

 

“That’s understandable,” Phil murmured, and Dani breathed a small, mirthless laugh.

 

“The other thing,” Dani said and then paused again, her eyebrows drawing together and her teeth worrying at one corner of her lower lip. She sighed and glanced back up at Phil. “I’m not, like, a new experience for you to have or a, I dunno, an experiment or a way for you to explore your sexuality or something. I’ve dated people who were really eager to have sex with me and it had nothing to do with who I was and everything to do with what I have between my legs.”

 

She fell silent, letting the words sit like a challenge between them.

 

“I’m not,” Phil started and then frowned. “I don’t come off that way, do I? Because I—“

 

“You don’t,” Dani assured her, the skin of one of her palms squeaking a bit as it rubbed back and forth over the condensation on the side of her glass. “I just…needed time to be sure you weren’t one of those.”

 

“I’m not,” Phil repeated.

 

“Yeah,” Dani said, and this time she smiled, an expression both tentative and hopeful, “I know.”

 

“I like you,” Phil stated, needing to make sure Dani knew. “I like everything about you.”

 

She saw Dani’s chest give a little heave, like maybe she was catching her breath, and color rush up into her cheeks. Her gaze flitted away again.

 

“I like you too,” she said. “A lot,” and she slid one foot over and jabbed gently at Phil’s shin with the sock-covered toe. Her socks were black, just like the rest of her clothes.

 

Phil’s face cracked into a smile. She lifted her own foot off the sofa and brought it down, trapping Dani’s beneath it. The other girl looked up at her, rolled her eyes, and then leaned to the side to set her glass down on the coffee table. She kept her foot carefully trapped beneath Phil’s the entire time. When she’d straightened up again, she raised one hand, crooked her finger, and beckoned.

 

“Come here,” she told Phil, still giving her a look that said she found her at once adorable and exasperating.

 

Phil went, setting Dani’s foot free again so that she could crawl over into the space Dani had made for her between her knees. She knelt there, staring down at the other girl as she rested a palm on either of her shins, watching Dani’s face as she let her hands travel slowly up to her bent knees, where they paused for a moment before sliding inch by careful inch down her denim-covered thighs.

 

Dani’s hands reached up and settled themselves over hers, holding them in place as she leaned in toward Phil. Phil closed her eyes and let her lips be captured for a moment in a soft kiss that ended when Dani pulled back with a sigh. When Phil opened her eyes again, Dani was still there in space, warm and close.

 

“Hi,” Dani murmured, eyes flicking down for a moment before rising again to gaze at Phil through lowered lashes. Her hands disappeared from Phil’s only to reappear at Phil’s back, coming to rest just beneath her shoulder blades.

 

“Hi,” Phil murmured back, letting her hands slide all the way down and come to rest either side of Dani’s hips. Dani’s body was so close but not quite touching hers, a glowing warmth pulsing in the interval between them, as though something in each of them was reaching out, filling what should be empty space.

 

She watched as Dani’s eyelashes fluttered shut once more and the other girl tilted her head back, so Phil leaned forward, letting her own eyes fall closed, until their lips met. The heat between them flared at once, and Phil found that her hands had closed their grip around Dani’s hips more tightly, were pulling her hips up and closer, pressing them into Phil’s own body at last.

 

Dani broke away first, and Phil listened to her suck in a deep breath before she opened her eyes. The other girl’s cheeks and neck were flushed a deep pink, and she was staring at Phil with a dark expression that _did things_ to Phil’s insides.

 

“Maybe it’s time to show you my bedroom,” Dani said, her voice low, a sparkle in her eyes.

 

Phil breathed out a laugh.

 

“But it’s only our second date,” she objected, even as she shifted back and stood from the sofa, allowing Dani a moment to catch her breath before she too stood and slid her fingers through Phil’s, tugging her over toward a doorway that Phil was vaguely aware opened off the right side of the room. Some other time, she was going to have to make Dani give her a proper tour of the flat. Some other time when there weren’t far more pressing matters at hand.

 

“Not true,” Dani said, raising an eyebrow, “On Sunday, we played Fortnite together—“

 

“We weren’t even in the same building!” Phil laughed.

 

“And Monday and Tuesday,” Dani continued as though Phil had never spoken, “And don’t forget we had lunch together on Tuesday—“

 

“It was barely a meal,” Phil said as they reached the door, and Dani pulled her inside. “I had a croissant and you had a muffin.”

 

“Still counts,” Dani whispered, pulling Phil all the way against her, one hand reaching up to press its palm against Phil’s back as she caught her lips in another deep kiss. “That makes this at least our sixth date, by my count,” she added once she’d pulled away again.

 

“Well, if it’s already our sixth date,” Phil whispered, too focused on the tingle left behind by the other girl’s lips to keep up her token protest.

 

Dani didn’t say anything but instead led her over to her bed. It was as big as Phil’s but much more neatly made, with a dove grey duvet tucked all the way up over the pillows. Just above it hung a huge, round mirror with the craters and valleys of the moon etched across the surface of the glass.

 

Phil looked at Dani, at the way the skin of her shoulders peeked through the sheer fabric of her top, at the swell of her breasts just visible below that, at her deliciously round thighs, her long arms, her parted lips. She reached up a trembling hand to cup the side of Dani’s throat, feeling the heat radiating from her flushed skin. Dani’s eyelids dropped closed, and she drew in a shaky breath.

 

“Are you sure you want—?” Phil began, but Dani cut her off at once.

 

“Very sure,” she whispered, her voice just as shaky as her breathing. Her eyes opened again, fixing on Phil’s. “Are you?”

 

Phil shifted her palm down Dani’s throat, letting her hand open, letting her palm graze the skin of Dani’s chest where it was exposed just above the neckline of her shirt.

 

“Yes,” she said. “I want this. I want you.”

 

“I want you too,” Dani said and then leaned in for another kiss, this one breathless and open, with Dani’s tongue reaching into Phil’s mouth, tasting her, feeling her out. Phil leaned into the kiss and let her palm drift further down over the swell of one breast until her hand was gently cupping it. She felt the other girl’s sharp intake of breath as much as she heard it. Then Dani was pushing up against her, hips tight against Phil’s, closing the tiny gap Phil had left between her palm and Dani’s breast. She closed her fingers around it with the barest of pressure and was rewarded with another gasp from between Dani’s lips.

 

She felt one of Dani’s hands slide down her back and then slip underneath her own shirt, and she shivered at that first contact of skin on skin. They both broke off the kiss then, almost as if by agreement, and took turns pulling one another’s shirts over their heads.

 

Phil reached out at once, unable to stop her hands wanting to touch, to explore. She settled them either side of Dani’s waist, moving them just enough to feel the silky warm slide of bare skin beneath them.

 

“You’re so soft,” she murmured as she studied Dani’s gently rounded belly, partially obscured beneath the waistband of her jeans. She slid the tips of her fingers just beneath the fabric and looked up into Dani’s eyes. “Mind if we take these off?”

 

Dani shook her head, her lips folded together, her eyes gone completely round.

 

“Go ahead,” she whispered when Phil didn’t immediately act.

 

Phil leaned in and pressed another long, slow kiss to the other girl’s lips, letting the kiss build up slow and easy as she worked the fiddly buttons of the jeans loose from their eyelets and then slid them down over Dani’s hips and thighs until they dropped to the floor. She didn’t want to let go of her, but Dani stepped away then, sitting down on the edge of the bed to work the tight legs of the jeans over her feet. At least it gave Phil a chance to take her in more fully, now that she was stripped down to just her underwear.

 

The bra she’d chosen today was, predictably, black with a satiny finish, and she was wearing panties to match, the dark fabric a stark contrast to the lightly-tanned skin of her stomach and thighs. A glitter caught Phil’s eyes, and she saw that Dani was wearing her belly button ring too.

 

Dani had rid herself of her jeans now and was gazing up at Phil with a raised eyebrow. Phil cocked her head to the side in question, so Dani raised a hand and gestured at Phil’s own jeans.

 

“It’s only fair,” she said, one side of her mouth quirking up in a wicked smile.

 

“True,” Phil nodded, feeling her whole body flushing with heat as she reached down and undid the flies of her own jeans. She’d worn her favorite bra today, a white one with little multicolored cactuses strewn across it, and when she slid her jeans off, they revealed that she was wearing cactus-patterned boxer briefs to match.

 

“You definitely suit those cacti,” Dani’s voice observed, and Phil blushed even harder as she kicked her jeans off her feet and then stepped out of them and toward the bed. When she looked up again, her heart stopped for a moment. Dani had taken her hair down from the clip she’d used to pin it up while they were out, letting it flow down over her shoulders, a few curls curving over the tops of her breasts. She was still sat on the edge of the bed, leaning back on her palms with her long legs dangling over the edge, thighs parted just enough to make it seem like an invitation.

 

Phil couldn’t help staring, her brain stumbling over itself to process the fact that the goddess she’d been aching to get closer to for _weeks_ now was right in front of her, offering herself for Phil’s eager worship. More than anything, though, she couldn’t believe how lucky she was that _Dani_ was the person seated on the bed in front of her.

 

Dani, who seemed incapable of playing any game without cursing a blue streak, who ate more than her fair share of the popcorn and still had the audacity to ask for some of Phil’s drink too. Dani, who had taken her to her very first sky bar. 

 

Who was now tilting her head and looking a question at Phil.

 

“Are you okay?”

 

“Yeah, I’m great,” Phil breathed, “I just, uh. What should we—? I mean, what do you want…me to do?”

 

Dani’s smile deepened, and then she patted the bed next to her.

 

“You could start by joining me here on the bed,” she suggested.

 

Phil shuffled over and sank down on the edge of the bed, just shy of touching one of Dani’s outstretched thighs.

 

“Tell me about what you like,” Dani murmured, reaching a hand over and trailing her fingers along the bare skin of Phil’s thigh, raising goosebumps there. Phil shivered and tried to think about how she wanted to answer that question.

 

“I like being in control,” she said after a moment, eyes fixed on the way Dani’s fingertips were running slowly down her thigh and then back up it again. “I like…making girls feel good and hearing the noises they make and watching them come. What about you?”

 

“Mmm,” Dani hummed, her attention still on the motion of her hand on Phil’s thigh, up and down, up and down, and Phil felt alternately hot and cold, shivering again as she imagined where Dani’s hand might go next. “I like it when someone uses their hands or their mouth on me. I like feeling safe…and wanted…desired.”

 

They both fell silent, letting each other’s words hang in the air while Dani’s fingers made a map of Phil’s left thigh.

 

“Can I kiss you again?” Phil finally asked, her heart pounding so hard inside her chest and her ears that she almost felt dizzy. Dani’s hand paused and then rose to slide around Phil’s back, wrapping around her other side and pulling her closer. Phil turned her head, her eyes finding Dani’s eyes, taking in the excitement and wariness and lust all mingled together inside them, before she leaned in pressed her lips against Dani’s.

 

For a while, they just kissed, both of them taking their time to run their hands here and there, exploring all of the newly-exposed skin, learning the feel of one another. Phil felt Dani’s body begin to relax under her touch. After a while, they moved further up the bed and lay down on their sides, arms wrapped around one another, legs hooked together, lips discovering the angles and curves of each other’s face, throat, chest— One of Phil’s hands found its way to Dani’s arse, palm smoothing over the gentle curve before her fingers closed around one cheek and squeezed.

 

Dani gave a low moan that seemed to burn away the last of Phil’s hesitation. She pulled Dani’s body in flush against her, and she let her other hand slide up into Dani’s curls, her fingers cupping the back of her skull as Phil kissed her way down Dani’s throat and paused to nip gently at the crook of her neck.

 

“Phil,” she heard the other girl breathe out. “Touch me…please.”

 

Phil didn’t need to be asked twice. Her hand slipped around to Dani’s front, fingers caressing over her abdomen and then down, over the waistband of her underwear and down until she was cupping her over the top of the satiny fabric.

 

“Hmm,” Phil murmured against the skin of Dani’s shoulder, “You’re really soft here too.”

 

A breath of laughter blew through Phil’s hair, tickling her scalp.

 

“Yeah,” she heard Dani whisper. “Can’t really get hard there anymore.”

 

Phil pressed another kiss to the skin of her shoulder and rubbed her palm experimentally against the warm, soft bulge beneath it. Dani let out a groan, low and throaty, and Phil’s lips broke open in a grin.

 

“Is that good?” she asked, continuing the light up and down stroking, noticing the little patch of moisture that had begun to form on the outside of Dani’s underwear.

 

“Yes,” Dani gasped. “You’re making me wet.”

 

“Can I—?” Phil asked, stroking her fingers back up to the waistband of Dani’s pants and pausing there.

 

“Yeah,” Dani murmured, so Phil slid her fingers beneath the stretchy elastic, closing her eyes so she could focus on the feeling of smooth, hot skin beneath her fingertips and the way it twitched and bunched beneath her touch. She slid her hand down until it was cupped around Dani again, palm touching bare skin now, and she could feel the wetness of her leaking out onto Phil’s palm.

 

“Should I…?” Phil asked, not quite sure what to do next. The truth was, she’d spent most of Saturday furiously trawling the internet for information, hoping that someone out there had written some kind of manual or guidebook explaining what one did with a penis. She’d found a _lot_ of stuff, most of it garbage, much of porn, but the most reliable-seeming sources all seemed to say the same thing: she should just ask Dani.

 

Fortunately, Dani seemed to agree.

 

“Here, let me show you,” the other girl said, and Phil felt another hand slide in beside hers, taking gentle hold of it and guiding it further south.

 

And then Phil got her very first, perfectly riveting and absolutely glorious lesson in exactly what Dani liked done with her penis…and her balls and her perineum and then, not too long after, her inner thighs and her nipples, and it took some time and some trial and error, but neither of them was in any rush.

 

“Oh, fuck, Phil, fuck, yes,” Dani was panting into her ear after a while, as Phil knelt between her legs and massaged a spot just behind her balls while licking slowly at one erect nipple. One of Dani’s hands had tangled itself in Phil’s short hair, and the other was digging its nails into her back. They were probably leaving marks, but frankly she couldn’t care less about that just now. “I’m close…really close…gonna—“

 

She felt Dani’s hips rise up off the bed, her whole body trembling beneath Phil’s, and then Dani let out a series of high-pitched moans, and Phil felt hot moisture coating her palm and running down between her fingers.

 

“God, yes,” she muttered as she sucked at Dani’s nipple and rubbed herself against one of Dani’s thighs, enjoying the burst of pleasure the contact sent rippling through her abdomen.

 

Then Dani’s hand was tugging at her hair, urging her to lift her head so that Dani could bring her lips down in a breathless kiss.

 

“Holy fuck,” the other girl panted into her mouth. “It’s been a while.”

 

“Yeah?” Phil asked, pressing another kiss beside Dani’s mouth and rubbing up against her thigh again. “For me too, actually.”

 

“Mmm,” Dani hummed, still sounding out of breath. “Want me to—?”

 

“Nah,” Phil murmured into her cheek, settling herself over Dani’s body, stomach resting atop Dani’s side, one leg tangled with Dani’s, one arm flung across the entire width of her, “not right now.”

 

She was still incredibly horny, and being pressed all against Dani’s naked skin like this wasn’t making things any better, but she was also kind of exhausted and was enjoying the position she was in just now too much to want to do anything else.

 

“That was really good,” she heard Dani slur after a while. She sounded like she might be falling asleep.

 

Phil chuckled quietly.

 

“Glad my research paid off.”

 

She felt Dani’s belly ripple with a laugh.

 

“Research? What kinda research?”

 

Phil bit her lip.

 

“I may have watched an entire thirty-three minute long video on Pornhub titled ‘Educational Penis Massage.’”

 

Dani’s body jostled her a bit as it convulsed with another laugh.

 

“Oh my god,” she wheezed. “Did you really?”

 

“It was the longest I’d ever stared at a penis in my entire life,” Phil confirmed. “It was actually kind of interesting, though. I guess I’d never paid much attention to what penises looked like.”

 

“So, you actually found it educational?” Dani’s tone was incredulous.

 

“Educational porn. Who knew?” 

 

Phil lay quiet for a moment, letting their laughter ebb away, before she asked her next question.

 

“You don’t mind me calling it your penis, right? I read that, like, some girls don’t feel comfortable with that. I guess I should have asked you first.”

 

“Mm, no, I don’t mind,” came Dani’s lazy voice. A moment later, Phil felt fingers running up her spine, sending a pleasurable shiver running through the core of her. “I don’t know. I think I’m probably more, like, non-binary than straightforwardly trans? Not that there aren’t plenty of trans women who are happy with their penises or with referring to their genitals as penises, but I’ve never felt that much dysphoria when it comes to my junk. It was always more about, like, my flat chest or the hair on my legs or worrying that my voice was going to deepen. Things like that. But once I started HRT and my body started looking and feeling more like I knew it was supposed to, most of that went away. I mean, I know I’m not a man. I’m definitely not a man, but I’m comfortable with the parts of me that are still what people might consider masculine.”

 

It was the most Phil had ever heard Dani talk about being trans, or she supposed, non-binary actually. She wanted to ask all kinds of questions, but Dani’s voice sounded dreamy and drifting, and her fingers had found their way up into Phil’s hair, where they were massaging her scalp and making it difficult for Phil to keep her own eyes open.

 

“I like your parts of you,” Phil mumbled instead, nuzzling her nose against Dani’s throat. “They’re good parts.”

 

Dani was quiet for a moment before she answered in shaky voice.

 

“Thanks. I think you’ve got good parts, too.”

 

Phil drifted off to sleep with a broad smile stretching her face.


	5. Til We Get By

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm on your side.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much, as always, to everyone who's reading this fic and to all of you who've given me encouragement and told me your thoughts about it. It really means the world to me! I felt like this chapter warranted a higher rating for the fic. My apologies to anyone who doesn't want to read E-rated fics.
> 
> Feel free to drop by Tumblr @transdimensional-void or Twitter @Smartinis or leave me a comment here, if you like. Next and final chapter on Thursday! <3

When Phil woke, the bed beside her was empty, but she could hear the sound of water running in the en suite bathroom. She lay still, having rolled onto her back at some point while she was sleeping, and half-dozed until she heard the click of the bathroom door opening and the soft padding of feet on the carpeted floor.

 

Her eyes slitted open again just as she felt the bed dip, and she saw Dani kneeling near the foot of the bed, in the open space left between Phil’s sprawled legs.

 

“Have a nice nap?” Dani asked, gazing down at her with hooded eyes. There were no lights on in the room, and the sun had set long ago. Dani was backlit by the incandescent light spilling through the open door, the yellowish glow creating a sort of halo around the edges of her body. She was still completely naked. Phil wondered if this was what it was like to die and wake up in heaven.

 

“Very nice,” Phil replied, her voice deeper than normal and scratchy from sleep. “You?”

 

She could just make out Dani’s lips curving up in a smile.

 

“I dozed a bit.”

 

Then, as Phil watched, Dani leaned forward, catching her weight on her hands as she settled herself on her stomach, right between Phil’s thighs. Phil was suddenly feeling very awake.

 

Dani kept her eyes locked on Phil’s as she lifted one hand and ran it up the outside of Phil’s leg from knee to hip. Phil had ditched her bra sometime during their earlier activities, but she was still wearing her cactus-covered underwear. Dani’s fingertips slid up under the edge of the fabric where it covered Phil’s upper thigh. Phil could see the way her own abdomen contracted as a shiver of desire passed through it.

 

“I want to go down on you,” Dani murmured and then dropped her gaze to the fabric stretched over the rounded flesh at the joining of Phil’s legs. Her pink lips were parted, and all Phil could do was stare at them, her mind racing with thoughts of how they would feel once they were on her.

 

“Yeah?” she breathed, the word coming out a little choked. “Think I’d be okay with that.”

 

“Just okay?” Dani asked, leaning forward so that Phil could feel the heat of her breath even through the fabric of her boxers.

 

“Ecstatic, actually,” Phil corrected, her voice wavering on a breathless laugh.

 

“Good,” Dani said, bringing her other hand up then and, looking back up to meet Phil’s eyes, hooking her fingertips in the waistband of Phil’s underwear. “May I?”

 

Phil nodded, having momentarily become bereft of speech. She watched, her stomach quivering with the effort of trying to control her heaving breaths, as Dani slid her boxers down, revealing the swathe of even-paler flesh and the little patch of reddish-brown curls they normally covered. It took a few moments of tugging and maneuvering her body out of the way, which Phil did her best to help along, but Dani finally had Phil’s boxers off and was tossing them over her shoulder onto the floor.

 

Then she was settling between Phil’s thighs again, hands snaking up over them, up onto her hips and then down the insides, sending pleasurable chills coiling through the sensitive flesh.

 

Her gaze flicked up toward Phil’s, full of heat that had Phil’s abdomen clenching again, and then she bent forward, her lips pursed, her cool hair dragging along Phil’s inner thighs, and pressed a soft kiss against the curls between Phil’s legs.

 

Phil’s eyes squeezed shut, and she kicked her head back, overwhelmed for a moment. _Fuck_. That was the most beautiful woman in the world down there between her legs.

 

Dani’s lips found their way over to her skin, then, first her right thigh and then her left, trailing kisses that made her throb and ache for more. She could feel a trickle of moisture already running down between her buttocks. Dani’s hands were on her then, gripping either thigh to spread them farther apart.

 

Phil forced her eyes open, wanting to make sure she saw every moment of this. Dani seemed intent on Phil’s body, her fingers still dug deep into the flesh of Phil’s thighs, and she was bending forward, her tongue outstretched for its first taste. When she finally felt her, warm and wet and moving in slow, flicking motions, a tremor ran through Phil’s whole body. 

 

“Holy—” she gasped as Dani’s tongue made its unhurried journey over her most sensitive parts. Her thighs were straining against Dani’s grasp, and she discovered that both of her hands had risen from the bed to tangle their fingers in Dani’s hair.

 

“Mmm,” she heard the other woman hum, low in the back of her throat, as she slid her tongue down and up again and over and then _inside_. 

 

“Oh, fuck,” Phil muttered, her head falling back against the pillows again. This was even better than she had fantasized all those weeks ago. “Dani, _fuck_ your mouth is amazing.”

 

Said amazing mouth disappeared for a moment, and Phil heard Dani murmur a throaty, “Thanks.”

 

Then her lips were trailing wet kisses over Phil’s hips and abdomen while her fingers slid down, running lightly over Phil’s clit and the slick folds of her labia, and then her palm curved down, cupping all of Phil in one delicious, warm press.

 

“Can I…?” Dani asked, her breath tickling the skin of Phil’s stomach as her fingers traced through the wetness around Phil’s hole.

 

Phil opened her eyes again then and tilted her head up enough to meet Dani’s gaze. She still had the fingers of her right hand woven into the curls at the side of Dani’s head. She bent them, letting her nails scratch lightly over Dani’s scalp.

 

“I’d rather you didn’t,” she murmured, accompanying the words with a slight quirk of her lips. “I mean, it’s, uh, it’s not awful but I don’t really like, um, penetration. If it’s just your tongue or, like, one finger or something that’s okay, but not…a lot.”

 

Dani eyes trailed over her face, and she tilted her head a bit further into Phil’s touch.

 

“That’s fine,” she said. “I just want to make you feel good. Tell me what you do like.”

 

Her hand was still cupping Phil, fingertips massaging, stroking up and down slowly.

 

“Like that is good,” Phil breathed out, “and what you were doing earlier, with your mouth. You have the most gorgeous fucking lips I’ve ever seen.”

 

Even in the dim light of the room, she thought she could make out a faint blush on Dani’s cheeks.

 

“I like using my mouth,” she murmured, her teeth catching her lower lip and running over them in a way that Phil found absolutely filthy. She watched as Dani bent and pressed a kiss beside her belly button and then another on her lower abdomen and then one right above her clit, and then her lips were _there_ again, brushing lightly, teasingly over her, kissing, rubbing, and then her tongue slid out, licked over her, drawing a deep moan from her throat.

 

“Yes, oh god, like that,” she mumbled, her fingers gripping more tightly at the side of Dani’s head.

 

She lost herself for a while after that, in the feeling of Dani’s lips and tongue and nose and chin and the way she seemed to know just how to keep Phil teetering on the edge of ecstasy without pushing her over. She was vaguely aware of Dani’s fingertips teasing the skin on her inner thighs, of Dani’s hair tickling her stomach and legs and abdomen, of her own fingers tugging at Dani’s curls, her own lips forming the other woman’s name over and over again.

 

Her orgasm seemed to happen suddenly, when Dani’s lips were closed over her, her mouth sucking while her tongue traced itself around her clit in tiny, agonizing circles. All at once, Phil felt her whole body shaking, her toes curling, her knees clamping around Dani’s waist, her fingers fisting themselves in Dani’s hair as white-hot pleasure rolled through her, starting at Dani’s mouth and spilling out into her abdomen and thighs and down to the tips of her toes and flooding through her chest.

 

“Oh god, oh god, Dani, god, fuck, _jesus yes_ ,” she heard her own voice babbling, and it seemed to go on forever, the waves pulsing through her over and over as Dani’s tongue and lips kept working at her, drawing out every last drop of pleasure.

 

It ebbed away slowly, leaving her trembling, her chest heaving, and her hand had slipped down to cup Dani’s cheek.

 

“C’mere,” she slurred, pulling gently at Dani’s face. She could only half make out her expression in the deep shadows cast by the bathroom light, but she couldn’t mistake the sheen of slick moisture across the lower half of her face. Dani crawled up her body, movements slow as though she might feel just as wrung out as Phil did. Phil raised an arm, made a space for Dani to settle into at her side, wrapped the arm around her waist as Dani’s lips met hers in a deep, wet kiss. She could taste herself all over Dani’s lips and tongue, could smell herself on Dani’s skin.

 

The kissing lasted for a while longer, the passion behind it calming to languid pecks and long sighs of contented weariness.

 

“That was incredible,” Phil whispered when Dani finally fell back against her shoulder, her body slack against Phil’s side. 

 

“You’re welcome,” she heard Dani say, feeling her lips moving against the skin of her chest. There was silence for a moment, as Phil stroked one palm up and down Dani’s warm side, and then Dani said, “Hey, Phil?”

 

“Yeah?” Phil said, her hand not pausing for a moment. She didn’t think, now that she knew what it felt like to touch Dani like this, that she ever wanted to stop.

 

“Do you want to be my girlfriend?”

 

Phil’s heart thudded in her chest, and a thrill of emotion jolted through the center of her.

 

“Yes,” she said quickly, “but only if you’ll be my girlfriend too.”

 

“Gladly,” came Dani’s reply, and Phil felt her hand settle itself on Phil’s bare stomach, her palm wide and warm.

 

“Also,” Phil said, letting her eyelids slide shut and her head loll back against Dani’s pillow, “seeing as how I’m your girlfriend and all, I think I should get to stay the night.”

 

“Agreed,” she heard Dani chuckle as she cuddled closer to Phil’s side, “because there’s no way I’m getting up to let you out right now.”

 

 

**

 

 

As much as Phil wished that they could have enjoyed a lazy morning after on Friday, they both had morning shifts to get to. Fortunately, since neither of them had bothered thinking about work before passing out the night before, Dani had a regular alarm set on her phone that woke them both up in time to get ready.

 

Unfortunately, it didn’t allow Phil enough time to get back to her own flat for a change of clothes.

 

“I think they have extra shirts at the store,” she muttered as she held up her wrinkled work shirt from the day before. She’d changed at the shopping center yesterday before they’d gone on their date, so she still had it wadded up in her backpack. Neither it nor the shirt she’d worn to the movie theater was exactly fresh.

 

“Just wear something of mine,” Dani called from inside her massive walk-in closet. “God knows I have enough clothes for at least two people.”

 

Phil snorted a laugh but stood and walked over to the closet anyway. At the moment, she was wrapped in only a towel—okay, three towels—having just stepped out of Dani’s shower moments before. She’d felt a pang of regret that they hadn’t had time for a lingering, shared shower. Soon, she told herself. They’d get to do it all soon.

 

She grinned a little as she stepped into the closet beside her girlfriend. Her girlfriend. Dani was her _girlfriend_.

 

“These jeans should fit you,” Dani said, turning toward her and holding out a pair of black jeans. “Weirdly enough, I think we wear the same size.”

 

Phil checked the tag and raised and eyebrow when she saw that yep, they were her size. It _was_ kind of weird, considering her giant Shakira hips. She cast a quick look down at Dani’s beautiful bum, covered at the moment by a clingy skirt. Could they really be the same size?

 

“I don’t know if any of my bras will fit you, though” Dani murmured, turning back to dig around in a set of drawers that she had pushed up against the back wall. Phil noted that Dani was only half-dressed herself, in the knee-length black skirt and a dark red bra with black lace overlaying the cups.

 

Phil glanced down at where one of the towels was wrapped tight over her flat chest. Yeah, she couldn’t argue with that. There was no way her tiny tits were ever going to fill out one of Dani’s bras. Half the time, she didn’t even bother with a bra, though she always made sure to wear one for work.

 

“I can wear my one from yesterday,” she shrugged as Dani turned again and held out a pair of white cotton panties. She took them, trying not to think too hard about the idea of wearing her girlfriend’s underwear.

 

“Have your pick of my shirts,” Dani told her, gesturing toward one entire side of the closet.

 

Phil browsed through the collection, chuckling a bit to herself as she realized there wasn’t a single shirt here that wasn’t black, white, gray, or some combination of the three.

 

“You do have a very distinctive style,” she murmured as she pulled out a plain, black long-sleeved shirt. “I’ll take this one.”

 

“Black,” Dani noted as she pulled down another black shirt for herself. “Good choice.”

 

Once they’d both finished dressing—and Phil didn’t miss the way Dani side-eyed her when she dropped her towels and started pulling on her underwear—they had just enough time for a quick bowl of cereal before they had to dash down to catch the bus.

 

“Convenient that we’re going to the same place,” Phil observed as they watched their bus round the far corner.

 

“Very convenient,” Dani agreed, leaning over and bumping her shoulder. Phil really wanted to reach for her hand, but there were several other people waiting at the same stop, and the way some of them were eyeing her made her too nervous to. It sucked, not being able to hold her girlfriend’s hand whenever she wanted, but on the plus side, _she had a girlfriend._

 

The bus was too full for either of them to get seats, but they stood next to each other in the aisle, shoulders brushing, while Dani checked her social media, and Phil tried to watch her without looking like she was watching her.

 

When they finally reached the shopping center, there were too many people around for her to give Dani the kind of good-bye kiss she thought she deserved, but she did at least reach down and give her hand a solid squeeze.

 

“See you at lunch break?” she asked with a hopeful rise of her eyebrows.

 

“Yes,” Dani said, a smile lighting up her face as she squeezed Phil’s hand back. Phil’s heart was racing as Dani stepped away and waved herself off deeper into the shopping center.

 

Phil felt like she was floating on a cloud of happiness all throughout the rest of the morning, and it was hard to concentrate on answering people’s questions about the differences between an iPhone 8 and an iPhone X or about which charging cord they should get for their iPad from 2015. Her brain kept taking her back to last night, to the memory of Dani’s ecstatic moans and of Dani’s mouth between her legs, and of the way Dani’s voice had sounded, tired but hopeful, when she’d asked Phil to be her girlfriend.

 

“Lester,” her manager, John, called her over after she finished ringing up a customer who’d spent ages trying to decide whether they really wanted to shell out for a brand new iPad or buy a refurbished one. She trotted over to where John was stood near the entrance to the employee area.

 

“Yes?” she asked.

 

“You seem in a good mood today,” he said, his lips forming a smile inside his thick salt and pepper beard.

 

“I am,” Phil said, returning his smile but refusing to explain any further. Her co-workers were well-aware that she was a lesbian and had never made a big deal of it, but she still didn’t feel quite comfortable discussing her dating life with any of them.

 

“Mind if we have a word?” John asked, nodding toward the door behind him.

 

Phil’s stomach turned over with a jolt of unease, but she nodded and then followed him into the back. There was a short corridor there, with a few doors opening off of it. A couple of them led to store rooms, one to the employee bathroom, and a couple more to offices. John led her into one of the offices, leaving the door open behind them. Everyone else was out on the floor right now, so she doubted there was anyone around to overhear.

 

“Have a seat,” John requested, gesturing at a chair as he perched on the edge of the desk. She sat down, keeping her back straight and trying to appear as alert as possible. “So, what I brought you in here to discuss,” he began, smiling at her again, “is that Laura put in her resignation a couple of days ago, which means we’ll be backfilling an assistant manager position soon.”

 

Phil had to do her best not to let her eyes go wide in surprise. That was not what she’d been expecting at all.

 

“I know you haven’t been back with us for long,” he continued, “but you’ve several years of experience in your current position, and you’re a hard worker. I think you would be a good candidate for promotion.”

 

For a moment, Phil couldn’t speak.

 

“You do?” she asked, almost wincing at how incredulous she sounded.

 

He chuckled, his eyes crinkling up with mirth.

 

“Of course,” he answered. “You’re one of the hardest-working employees I’ve ever had.”

 

“Thanks,” Phil said, taken aback at the compliment. Of course, she always did her best to do her job right because she didn’t want to get fired, but she didn’t think that she worked that much harder than anyone else.

 

“The posting for the position should go up on Monday,” John continued with a nod of acknowledgement for her thanks. “It’s your choice, of course, but I think you should apply.”

 

Phil nodded, her brain still trying to catch up. She’d followed John in here fully expecting a reprimand for being so spacey today.

 

“Yeah, I’ll definitely think about it,” she said. “Thank you. Again.”

 

“Of course,” he said, standing and gesturing toward the door.

 

 

When lunchtime came a short while later, she was positively bursting with the news. She met Dani down at the M•A•C Store, and they walked the short distance together to the Chinese food place at the other end of the shopping center. Phil told her about the meeting with John on the way.

 

“That’s wonderful,” Dani said as they came to a stop at the end of the queue for ordering. “Congratulations! Do you think you’ll apply?”

 

Phil paused, stopping for the first time to really consider it. It was a great opportunity. She couldn’t deny that. She’d see a significant rise in her pay and probably get to work more hours. And it would be a stepping stone to a higher position in the company, like John’s or, eventually, even higher. She tried to imagine herself in some high-rise office somewhere, with a title like VP of Regional Sales or Director of Marketing Operations. To be honest, she couldn’t really picture it.

 

“I don’t know yet,” she confessed, and Dani nodded as though she had expected that answer. They were at the counter by then, so the conversation didn’t resume until they’d placed orders, picked them up, and then found their way out to the small collection of tables in front of the restaurant.

 

“What would you do instead, if you didn’t decide to pursue a career with Apple?” Dani asked as she opened up her carton of noodles and then began to take the lids off all of the little dip pots she’d been requested.

 

“Something with film editing?” Phil suggested as she opened up her own carton of chicken and fried rice. “I mean, that’s the kind of thing I’ve been applying to since before graduation.”

 

“No offers yet?” Dani asked.

 

Phil shrugged.

 

“None that I’ve been willing to take.” When Dani raised her eyebrows at that, she elaborated, “I did get offered a job editing adult films.”

 

“Oh,” Dani said, her brows lowering once more as a laugh sparkled in her eyes. “Well, what about YouTube?”

 

Phil shrugged again.

 

“I make a little bit off it each month, but nothing near enough to live on,” she said as she dug into her food.

 

Dani looked thoughtful as she slurped at her noodles.

 

“Tell me if I’m out of line,” she said after a while, “but you did say that you studied post-production specifically for YouTube, right?” When Phil ducked her head and nodded, she went on, “Have you ever tried to make a real go of it?”

 

Phil’s mouth was full of fried rice, which spared her from answering right away. Instead, she made a vague gesture that was sort of between a head shake and a shrug.

 

Dani was quiet for a while again, and Phil dared a peek up at her. She was gazing at Phil, still with that same thoughtful look.

 

“You don’t have to—” Phil began when she’d finally swallowed, but Dani cut her off.

 

“No, but I think you do,” she said around a mouthful of noodle. “I think if you don’t give yourself a chance, you’re going to regret it.”

 

Phil looked down at her food again.

 

“Look,” she heard Dani say from across the table. “SITC is next month, yeah? I’m going and so are some other people I know. Why don’t you come too, maybe even have a chance to meet some of your viewers? I’m sure if you announced on your channel that you were going, some of them would be excited.”

 

Phil frowned. She’d never considered that before. People might want to meet her? Her, plain, old Phil Lester? Just because she occasionally made some funny videos that they liked?

 

“You really think so?” she asked.

 

Dani snorted and shook her head.

 

“I’m positive they would,” she stated, leveling a challenging look at Phil. “You underrate yourself.”

 

Heat prickled up Phil’s neck and into her cheeks, and she ducked her head once more, unable to meet that steady gaze.

 

“What’s the next video you’ve got planned?” Dani persisted.

 

“Uh, well,” Phil mumbled into her rice, “I haven’t really… I have a list of ideas, but I’m not sure which one I’m going to do next.”

 

“Do you know when you’re planning to put it up?”

 

Phil chewed at her lip.

 

“Next week sometime? I try to post at least once every two weeks or so, to keep my channel active.”

 

“Okay, that’s good,” Dani nodded, taking a sip of her water. “And, you know, I was thinking that maybe I could invite you on one of my gaming livestreams sometime. Promo your channel a little bit.”

 

“Really?” Phil asked, shocked that Dani would even be willing to suggest that, what with the yawning gap between their subscriber counts. 

 

“Yeah,” Dani grinned, “It’d be fun! Plus, we already know we make a great team.”

 

Phil felt something warm and glowing kindle inside her chest.

 

“Yeah,” she said, picking up her fork and digging into her rice again. “Yeah, we definitely do.”

 

 

**

 

The text came through the following afternoon when she was curled up on Dani’s sofa pounding out the script for her next video. Somehow after work on Friday, she’d ended up trailing after Dani to her bus stop and getting on the bus toward Dani’s flat instead of the one that would take her home. They’d stopped by Boots on the way to pick up a toothbrush, change of underwear, and a t-shirt for Phil so she wouldn’t have to keep borrowing from Dani. They’d cooked a veggie stir fry together, and after dinner had ended up in Dani’s bed again. This time, she’d been given the delightful task of learning how to get Dani off with her mouth, and once she’d accomplished it, Dani had reciprocated by giving her another earth-shattering orgasm of her own.

 

In the morning, they’d finally got the chance to sleep in as Phil had wanted, followed by a lazy session in the shower that might have ended up with Phil’s fingers inside Dani’s arse and Dani’s hands between her legs. Even now, several hours later, Phil’s body still felt wonderfully relaxed and satisfied. Good sex tended to do that for her, helped calm her, helped her focus better.

 

And then her phone had to go and buzz and shatter that hard-won focus.

 

She picked it up, thinking that perhaps Dani had been too lazy to come out of the office where she was working on her own script and had decided to text her instead.

 

_Hey, Phil! Long time no see. This is Cara. Your mum gave me your number the other day when we ran into each other at the shops. Did she tell you? Anyway, just wanted to say hi and see if you’d like to catch up._

 

She stared in surprise at the text for a very long time before swiping it open and typing out a reply.

 

_hey, cara! wow, it has been a long time. and yeah, it might be fun to catch up sometime. can i bring my girlfriend along?_

 

The last sentence was to make absolutely sure Cara wasn’t getting the wrong idea about what “catching up” would involve. Phil was sorely in need of some friends to hang out with here in Manchester, so she was eager to see if Cara could fulfill that role. She just wanted it to be very clear that she was looking to become friends and nothing more. It took a few minutes for Cara to reply.

 

_Sure, of course! How about tonight? Got any dinner plans?_

 

Phil frowned down at the phone and then, with a sigh for her half-finished script, set her laptop aside and stood from the sofa. She made her way down the hall to the door of Dani’s office, which stood partly ajar. She could see Dani inside, huge headphones covering her ears, head bobbing along to whatever she was listening to as she tapped away at her keyboard. Phil found herself leaning against the doorframe for several long moments, just staring at the other woman as a little wave of fondness rippled through her chest.

 

She almost regretted that she had to interrupt her.

 

She pushed off the doorframe and made her way over, setting a hand on Dani’s shoulder to get her attention. Dani visibly jumped and then craned her neck around to see who was there. When she caught sight of Phil, her expression relaxed, and she reached up and yanked off her headphones.

 

“Jesus, you almost gave me a heart attack.”

 

“Oops,” Phil said, grinning down at her, one hand still on her shoulder. 

 

“It’s okay,” Dani snorted. “What’s up?”

 

“My friend texted me and asked if I had any dinner plans, so I wanted to see if you’d be up for going out to dinner with her.”

 

“You don’t want to go by yourself?” Dani asked, cocking her head to one side. “I mean, not that I mind…”

 

“Well,” Phil said, hunching her shoulders a bit, “she might be an ex-girlfriend who I haven’t seen since sixth form, and I might have no idea what to expect. And if she ends up being awful, I might need you to fake a deadly illness so we can leave early.”

 

One of Dani’s eyebrows rose.

 

“I could probably manage that,” she said. “And she knows I’m coming?”

 

“Yep,” Phil gave a single up and down of her chin, “specifically asked her if I could bring my girlfriend.”

 

The glow she saw in Dani’s eyes matched exactly what she felt inside every time she remembered that she got to call Dani that now.

 

“Where does she want to go?” Dani asked. “And when?”

 

Phil grinned.

 

“I’ll ask.”

 

 

They ended up agreeing to meet Cara at a nearby Italian place. Phil was once again dressed in Dani’s clothes considering that she still hadn’t gone home yet. Luckily, Dani seemed to have a steady supply of plain, long-sleeved black shirts that Phil thought she suited pretty well. They walked into the restaurant hand in hand to find Cara already seated at a table off to one side waiting for them. She waved them over with a, “Hey! Phil!”

 

Phil grinned and waved back, and as they made their way through the crowded tables toward her, she heard Dani mutter, “Well, she’s very pretty” under her breath. Phil shot her a curious look and gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. Cara _was_ pretty, and whatever Phil’s mum said, the pink hair was actually a good look on her. But as far as Phil was concerned, no one could even hold a candle to Dani.

 

“Phil, so good to see you again,” Cara was saying as they finally approached her table. She stood and held out her arms, and Phil leaned in for a hug that wasn’t as awkward as she’d feared it would be. It was quick, friendly, and nothing else. When they drew back, Cara looked expectantly toward Dani.

 

“This is my girlfriend, Dani,” Phil said, looking over at Dani with a proud smile. She didn’t miss the waver in Dani’s smile or the nervousness in her eyes as she held up a hand and gave Cara a little wave. “Dani, this is Cara.”

 

“Nice to meet you,” Dani said.

 

“Nice to meet you, Dani,” Cara said, eyeing her up and down before gesturing toward the table. “Shall we have a seat?”

 

Phil pulled out her and Dani’s chairs, and they all sat down. Dani snatched up a menu at once and began perusing it, and Phil wondered if maybe she was giving her and Cara a chance to chat.

 

“Have you ordered yet?” Phil asked, turning to Cara. She noticed that Cara was eyeing Dani again, but she turned back to Phil with her same warm smile. 

 

“Not yet. I got here just before you two,” she explained. “So, your mum tells me you’re back working at the Apple Store?”

 

“Mm hmm,” Phil nodded. “And you’re in law school?”

 

“Yeah, at BPP. Kinda changed my mind toward the end of my degree and decided I wanted to do Law instead of Psychology, so I’m doing a conversion course.”

 

“That’s really cool,” Phil said.

 

The waiter came over then, bringing them all glasses of water. None of them were ready to order yet, though, so she went away again quickly. Dani chose that moment to fold the menu and pass it over to Phil.

 

“I’m not very hungry,” she said, not meeting Phil’s eye. “I think I’ll just stick with my water for now.”

 

Phil studied her for a moment as she took the menu, and she could tell something wasn’t quite right, but she didn’t know what.

 

“And what about you, Dani?” Cara’s voice cut across the question Phil had been about to ask. “What do you do?”

 

“Oh,” Dani said, turning away from Phil and plastering on a smile that Phil could see right through. “I’m a makeup artist.”

 

“Really?” Cara said, tilting her head to the side in an expression of interest. “How did you get into that?”

 

Dani shrugged, the gesture too jerky.

 

“Makeup and fashion are things I’ve always had an interest in,” she said but didn’t elaborate any further.

 

“I’m sure they are,” Cara said, her smile deepening before she picked up the menu Phil had just set down and began looking through it.

 

Phil frowned and was about to ask Dani if she was okay when she was startled by the sound of Dani’s chair scraping back across the restaurant’s wooden floor.

 

“I’m gonna go to the bathroom,” she said, and Phil just caught a glimpse of her wooden expression before she did an about-face and hurried off toward the back of the restaurant. 

 

Phil half-stood, about to follow her, when the sound of a little laugh interrupted her again.

 

“So, I guess you’re bi now?” she heard Cara ask.

 

Phil blinked in confusion, looking back around at Cara and sinking down into her chair again.

 

“What?”

 

“You know, coz…” she trailed off and nodded toward where Dani had disappeared to. “Don’t tell me you didn’t know! I mean, it’s pretty obvious.”

 

“I’m sorry,” Phil said, her frown deepening. “I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”

 

“Oh, lighten up, Phil,” the woman across the table laughed. “It’s just a joke. I just think it’s funny that you, of all people, ended up with someone like that. You used to be the biggest lesbian going.”

 

It was like a bucket of cold water had been poured over Phil’s head when it finally dawned on her what Cara was saying.

 

“Excuse me?” she asked, so stunned that her normal avoidance of confrontation flew right out the window.

 

The waiter reappeared at their table then, and Cara ignored Phil’s incredulous expression to put in her order. 

 

“And for you?” the waiter asked, turning to Phil.

 

“I’m all right, thank you,” Phil said, understanding now what had made Dani’s appetite disappear earlier.

 

The waiter collected their menus and left them again, and Phil was on the verge of standing and saying that she thought she should go when Cara spoke up again.

 

“Please don’t get offended, Phil. I’m just concerned about you, that’s all.”

 

All Phil could do was gape at her.

 

“Concerned about me?”

 

Cara’s expression had turned completely earnest. She nodded.

 

“Like, I know they can be really good at dressing up and pretending to be women, and maybe he lured you in without you realizing—”

 

Phil pushed back her chair with a loud squeak that had people all across the restaurant turning their heads to stare. She was far too livid to be embarrassed, though.

 

“I’m going now,” she gritted out between clenched teeth, “I don’t think we really have anything else to say to each other.”

 

Across the table, Cara’s look of concern morphed into a sneer.

 

“I was just trying to save you from getting hurt,” Phil heard her snap as she turned on her heel to go. Phil didn’t even bother to acknowledge that but instead stalked off toward the bathrooms. It hadn’t missed her how long Dani had been gone now.

 

She found her leaning against the counter with her shoulders hunched, staring down at her phone screen. She couldn’t tell whether she was actually doing something with it or just pretending.

 

“Hey,” Phil said as the door creaked shut behind her. “Are you okay?”

 

“Yeah,” Dani mumbled, still staring down at her phone. “I just felt… I dunno. It’s probably nothing. Don’t worry about me. You can go back to—”

 

“Nah, let’s just go home,” Phil said, taking a careful step closer.

 

Dani looked up at her, surprise and dismay in her expression.

 

“Are you sure? I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to ruin your dinner with your friend. I’m just being silly—”

 

“No, you aren’t,” Phil said and then nodded her head toward the door. “And you didn’t ruin anything. I’m not interested in being her friend anymore. Let’s go home. Or we can stop somewhere else for food, if you’d like.”

 

Dani studied her, and Phil didn’t miss the moisture sparkling at the corners of her eyes.

 

“Can we go back to my place and order a pizza and get smashed while playing Mario Kart?” she asked, only the smallest tremor wavering her voice.

 

“Sounds like the perfect evening,” Phil said, holding out a hand. Dani slid her phone back into her purse and took the outstretched hand, and Phil led her out of the bathroom and back out of the restaurant, making very sure not to look toward where she guessed Cara was still sat waiting for her dinner order.

 

They were both quiet on the bus ride home, though Dani huddled in close and laid her head on Phil’s shoulder as soon as they were seated. Phil couldn’t stop thinking about her horrible conversation with Cara. Sure, she’d known there were people who thought that way about trans women. She’d read plenty of that kind of shit online, even heard a few people spout it in person. She’d just never heard it from someone she actually knew, someone she’d thought of as one of the good ones. It just didn’t fit with her memories of Cara. She’d always been such a sweet person, back when they were in sixth form. What had happened to her?

 

“She said something about me after I left, didn’t she?” Dani murmured when they were only a few stops away from her flat.

 

“She’s an idiot,” Phil muttered, putting her arm around Dani’s shoulder, not caring for once what the people around them might think. “You’re worth a thousand of her.”

 

“Okay,” she heard Dani say, her voice very soft. Phil tightened her hold around her shoulders and held on until they reached their stop.

 

Once they were back in Dani’s flat, the other girl disappeared immediately into her bedroom and then emerged a few minutes later dressed in pajama bottoms and a camisole. Her face was washed clean of its usual flawless makeup, and she’d let her hair down. Phil was struck all over again by just how beautiful this version of Dani was.

 

“Would you mind calling for the pizza?” she asked, plopping down on the sofa and reaching for the PlayStation controller.

 

“Course not,” Phil said, sinking down beside her and resting a hand on one pajama-clad knee while she pulled her phone from her pocket and rang Domino’s. She wasn’t sure what kind of pizza Dani liked, but when she told the person on the other end they wanted one pepperoni and one barbecue, she saw the other girl nod in approval.

 

Phil mixed them each a vodka and cranberry, and they were both a drink down and several rounds of Mario Kart in (how did Dani keep beating her?) by the time the pizza arrived. As they took a break from the game to gorge themselves on pizza, Phil finally decided to ask the question that she’d been trying to put together since they’d left the restaurant.

 

“Do you mind if I ask how you knew? I mean, that Cara was going to say some stupid shit?” Dani had a mouthful of pizza and was checking her phone, and when she didn’t immediately respond, Phil added, “We don’t have to talk about it, if you don’t want. You just seemed to pick up on it so much more quickly than I did, and I want to be able to do that too in the future.”

 

Dani sighed and set her phone down on the arm of the sofa. She darted a sideways look at Phil and then took another big bite of her slice of barbecue pizza.

 

“I don’t know that it’s something you could really learn how to do,” she said when she had chewed and swallowed. “She just gave me this look. I mean…I can tell when I’ve been clocked.” She paused, a crease appearing between her perfectly-shaped eyebrows. “You’ve probably got similar looks before. You know how when you’re out in public, and someone just looks at you like you confuse them and then you see this sort of realization light up behind their eyes? And then whatever comes next, after that realization, that’s what decides you whether they’re someone to avoid or not.”

 

Phil nodded slowly. Yeah. Yeah, she definitely knew exactly what look Dani was talking about. It often preceded that “What are you?” question so many people seemed fond of asking her. But the people who asked that question weren’t usually the ones she had to worry about. It was the ones who she could see deciding for themselves exactly what they thought she was. She reached her hand over to rest it on Dani’s knee again.

 

“I’m sorry,” she said. “People can be really awful, and you don’t deserve that. Not one bit.”

 

She was pretty sure there were tears in Dani’s eyes again, but this time the smile she shot toward Phil looked far more genuine.

 

“Thanks,” she said. “I know that, but it’s nice to hear someone else say it sometimes.”

 

“You’re welcome,” Phil told her, leaning forward until her face was just a few centimeters from Dani’s. “Can I give you a pizza-y kiss now?”

 

She was rewarded by Dani throwing her head back and letting out a full-throated laugh.

 

“You’re disgusting,” she muttered, but when she’d had her laugh, she leaned in and kissed Phil long and hard anyway.

 

“Too bad you’ve already asked me to be your girlfriend,” Phil murmured when they’d finished. “No backing out of it now.”

 

“No,” Dani agreed, eyeing her with a smirk. “I don’t suppose there is.”


	6. Wifey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Somebody better's gonna right your wrong.

“How do I look?”

 

Phil glanced up from where she’d been bent over the sink, spitting out a mouthful of toothpaste and then fell still as she took in the vision before her.

 

Dani was wearing a white dress of some kind of soft-looking, clingy fabric. It had long sleeves and a scoop neck and a full skirt that swished around her knees as she stepped through the bathroom doorway. She’d cinched the waist in with a skinny black belt that had a small, gold buckle. Her hair was down, the dark curls a stark contrast to the white fabric they lay against, and a pair of demure diamonds sparkled in her earlobes.

 

“You’re wearing white,” was all Phil could come up with at first. She followed it up with a hasty, “You look stunning.”

 

“Thanks,” Dani smiled, her eyes shifting to the side. “You don’t think it’s too much? I don’t want to seem, you know, out of place.”

 

“You won’t,” Phil assured her. “If my mum and dad stare, it’ll only be because of how beautiful you look.”

 

Dani rolled her eyes a little, but her gaze ultimately came to rest on Phil’s.

 

“Not staring at all would be preferable,” she said, “but I guess I’ll take what I can get.”

 

“They won’t stare,” Phil assured her, rinsing off her toothbrush and shoving it into the cup by the tap. “I promise.”

 

It was a Sunday in early September, strangely warm still, but not quite as oppressively so as August had been. Today, Dani would be accompanying Phil to Sunday dinner to meet her parents for the very first time.

 

Phil’s parents had heard all about Dani by now, of course. And that wasn’t because they’d given Phil the Spanish Inquisition. Over the past couple of months, Phil and Dani had become so inseparable that there was literally no way for Phil to tell her parents about her life without talking about Dani as well.

 

Her parents had heard all about the first time Dani had invited Phil to join her on a gaming livestream, about how much fun Phil had had despite her nerves, and about how both their subscriber counts had seen a subsequent massive spike. Phil’s was climbing up close to 150,000 now, a number that she almost couldn’t comprehend, it was so huge. She’d made Twitter and Instagram accounts to match her YouTube handle (and gone private on her personal ones), and the numbers there were growing steadily as well.

 

Her parents had heard the whole story about Phil’s first trip to SITC, how even though she hadn’t been billed as a guest creator, she’d still had more than a hundred people come up to her over the course of the weekend and tell her they watched her videos and loved them. And how Dani had sneaked her into all the backstage areas, introduced her to tons of other creators, many of whom Phil had looked up to for years. Phil’s parents knew just how simultaneously energized and intimidated she’d felt by the whole experience. And they knew that she didn’t think she could have survived it (and certainly would have never even _had_ it) if not for Dani’s solid presence by her side throughout.

They knew how nervous she’d been the first time she’d gone out with Dani and her friends, Ryan and Letizia, from the M•A•C Store, how she’d fretted beforehand that they were going to hate her or think she wasn’t good enough for Dani. And they knew that on the contrary, Dani’s friends had accepted her with open arms and gushed about how happy Dani seemed to be now that Phil was around.

 

Phil’s parents knew that she’d decided not to apply for the Assistant Manager position. That had been a difficult conversation. As supportive as Phil’s parents had always been of her following her own path, they were still her parents…and were still helping her cover the rent on her flat. But she’d sat them down and shown them the business plan that Dani had helped her draw up, an actual, honest-to-god strategy to grow her channel to the point that the income from her videos could support her. She would need to cut her hours at the Apple Store to really make it work, but she’d promised her parents that she would give it everything she had. 

 

Eventually, they’d agreed to give her a year. One more year of helping her out with bills while she tried to make her dream career come true. It was going to help a lot that, considering the amount of time Phil spent at Dani’s flat anyway, the two of them had decided she should just move in when her lease was up at the end of October. Once her parents had heard about that, they’d gently suggested that maybe it was time she bring Dani round to meet them.

 

As of yesterday, her parents also knew that Dani was trans. 

 

When Phil had first told Dani about her parents’ invitation, the other girl had looked uncomfortable with the idea.

 

“My parents always want to meet my girlfriends,” Phil had tried to explain, eyeing Dani across the bed where she was curled up against the headboard. “They’ve heard all about you already anyway, and I know that once they meet you, they’re going to really like you.”

 

Dani had listened to these reassurances while frowning down at her duvet and picking at a loose string sticking out from one of the seams.

 

“But I’m not exactly like your past girlfriends,” she’d mumbled to the bit of string.

 

“No,” Phil had conceded as she watched the way Dani’s beautiful lips turned down into a frown, “I didn’t feel about any of them the way that I feel about you. You’re definitely different.”

 

Dani’s hands had fallen still, and her head had turned to study Phil with a clouded expression.

 

“Really?”

 

Phil had nodded, her lips trembling with the courage it had taken to force that particular confession out.

 

“I…I think you’re different too,” Dani had replied after a moment, her forehead still wrinkled, “This relationship is really important to me, and I think it is to you too. I want this to go well—meeting your parents, I mean.”

 

“So do I,” Phil had said, her heart leaping with excitement inside her chest. “And I really think it will.”

 

“I want you to tell them about me before we go,” Dani had said, her gaze swinging away again to fix on the far wall. “Tell them that I’m trans.”

 

“Okay,” Phil had said, nodding slowly. She hadn’t exactly been hiding that fact from her parents up until now. She just hadn’t felt it was any of their business. “If that would make you more comfortable, I can do that, though I’ve shown them your videos and some of your social media accounts. They might already know.”

 

“I want you to make sure they know before we meet. I don’t want the same thing happening that happened with Cara.”

 

Phil had winced at that. 

 

To her relief, Cara hadn’t tried to contact her again after that awful, abortive attempt at a reunion. She still thought about it a lot, and she wondered if Dani did too. She knew from their conversations on the topic that Dani had had to endure even worse than the things Cara had said, from people who had no qualms saying it straight to her face rather than behind her back. It surprised her that the encounter with Cara even registered as a blip on Dani’s radar. Then again, Cara had been a friend of Phil’s, someone Dani had probably been interested in getting to know, maybe even someone she’d wanted to impress. 

 

Phil had winced again as she imagined how much more that must have made Cara’s rejection hurt.

 

“I’ll talk to them,” Phil told her, stretching out a hand and running her fingers down Dani’s bare arm, wanting to soothe her. “But I can promise you they’re going to like you. You’re a very easy person to like.”

 

They’d lain in bed together all the rest of that evening, Dani wrapped up tight in Phil’s arms while she kissed her hair and her cheek and her shoulder and told her over and over again just how wonderful a person she was. Over the past couple of months, Phil had learned that Dani needed that sometimes, to have all of those hateful words people had left inside her head drowned out by a flood of loving ones.

 

That night had been the first time Phil had known for sure that all of those things she murmured in Dani’s ear _did_ spring from love. The realization had left her simultaneously terrified and elated. 

 

_She was in love_.

 

The conversation with her parents yesterday had reminded her just why they remained two of her favorite people in the entire world.

 

She’d come over in the afternoon, after getting off an early shift at the store. When she’d asked her parents if she could come over on Saturday, she’d made it clear to them that it was to discuss something important. She’d arrived to find her mum putting a kettle on for tea and her dad setting out a plate of biscuits on the kitchen table.

 

“I’m not a guest, you know,” she’d laughed when she stepped into the room. “Or have you forgotten me already? Hello! I’m Phil, your daughter.”

 

“Oh, hush, you,” her dad had said, swatting gently at her arm as she pulled out a chair. “Or I’ll send you to bed with no tea.”

 

Phil had stuck out her tongue, and her dad had stuck his out back at her, and inwardly she’d felt a rush of gratitude to her parents for making an effort to put her at ease.

 

Once the three of them had all been settled around the table clutching their respective mugs of tea, Phil had cleared her throat.

 

“So, Dani and I are coming over for dinner tomorrow,” she’d begun, “but she asked me to talk to you first because she wants to make sure everything is out in the open before you meet her.”

 

There had been inquisitive smiles from her parents at that, but her mum had given her a nod to go on, so she had.

 

“Dani is trans,” Phil had begun, reciting the speech she and Dani had worked out and making sure she explained things the way Dani liked to talk about them, “or, more accurately, non-binary. When she was born, the doctors put down male on her birth certificate, but once she got older, she realized that label didn’t fit her. She started dressing differently and wearing makeup and grew her hair out longer. Eventually, she transitioned medically, and now she is happy with the way she looks and feels.”

 

Of course, Phil knew that there was a lot more to the story than those bare facts. It had taken Dani a while to open up to her about all of it. She’d let out little bits and pieces over the first few weeks of their relationship, until finally Phil was able to put it all together into the complete picture of Dani’s childhood and adolescence.

 

“When I was little, eight or nine or so, I think my parents just assumed I was gay,” Dani had told her one night when they’d stayed up late talking after watching a movie together. “At the time, that was the best framework they had for understanding why I was so interested in pretty clothes and makeup and things that they thought were supposed to be for girls.”

 

As long as they’d just thought she was a gay boy, Dani’s parents had been fine with her experimentations with her appearance and mannerisms…and as long as she confined these experimentations to the privacy of their home. They drew the line at her wearing her favorite pink skirt or carrying her purple, heart-shaped purse outside of the house.

 

Dani herself hadn’t realized what was really going on until the kids around her age had started to hit puberty.

 

“I think I was lucky to be a late bloomer,” she’d explained to Phil one morning over a lazy breakfast. “I got to see how everyone else’s bodies were changing and realize what I did and didn’t want to happen before it was actually happening to _me_.”

 

She’d watched the boys her age begin growing facial hair, had heard their voices crack, seen their shoulders getting broader, the features of their faces coarser, and she’d had nightmares about the same things happening to her. She’d dream about one day waking up in a body that didn’t feel like hers, with too much hair and a booming, deep voice, and in her dreams she would tear at herself, trying to scrape off the hair, rip out the disgusting adam’s apple in her throat, break her bones and bend them back into the right shape.

 

She’d come out to her parents when she was 14, so desperate to halt the changes that had already begun to creep up on her that she’d managed to overcome her fear of their reaction.

 

She hadn’t told Phil much of the details of that conversation, but Phil had gathered that Dani’s parents hadn’t taken it well.

 

“I know in a lot of ways I’m one of the lucky ones,” Dani had sighed curled up in bed together on a rainy afternoon. “At least my parents had enough of a conscience not to kick their fourteen-year-old kid out on the street to fend for herself.”

 

Instead, they’d loaded her off onto her grandmother. 

 

“They basically disowned me,” Dan had answered with a philosophical shrug when Phil had asked a hesitant question about her parents one day. “By about the third month after I moved in with my gran, they’d stopped all contact. I haven’t spoken to them since.”

 

But there had been a silver lining there too. The move had let Dani start over at a new school, with a different name (“Well, sort of different. My gran had called me Danny instead of Daniel my entire life, and my parents always hated that, so I sometimes think I chose the name mostly out of spite.”) and a different appearance. She’d made new friends who knew her as a girl and nothing else. And her gran had had money, money she’d used to help Dani start to transition.

 

“I know I’m really, really privileged compared to a lot of trans people,” Dani had told her over a Starbucks coffee during their lunch break once. “So few people are lucky enough to even have a parent or guardian who supports their transition, much less one with enough money to pay for them to see a private psychiatrist because the waiting list for the NHS ones is sixth months long.”

 

But Dani’s gran had paid for her to see a psychiatrist immediately, and she’d cared about Dani enough to do her homework and get her in to see one who supported the idea of teenagers transitioning. The psychiatrist had signed off on her starting HRT within a couple of months of the first appointment, and Dani had finally started taking T-blockers when she was fifteen.

 

“Funnily enough, I don’t actually take T-blockers anymore,” Dani had explained one morning as she took her daily pill. “The estrogen alone keeps my testosterone levels down in the right range, and I think being on spironolactone messed with my brain chemistry and made my depression worse.”

 

That was another thing Dani had opened up to her about—her screwy brain chemistry and how the hormones had made it even screwier. Not that she even for a moment considered not taking them.

 

“I know for a fact I would feel a million times worse if I hadn’t transitioned,” Dani had assured her after she’d downed her pill. Then she’d walked over to give Phil and impromptu kiss and Phil had murmured something about liking very much how Dani felt as she’d let her hands run down her sides and over her hips.

 

But Phil hadn’t told her parents any of that. It was Dani’s story to tell, if she ever felt that she wanted to tell it to the Lesters. For today, Phil would tell them what Dani thought they needed to know and nothing more. 

 

Across the kitchen table, Phil’s parents had exchanged a glance when she’d finished her speech. Her mother had been the first to speak up.

 

“Did you know that Dani was trans before you started dating her?” she’d asked, both hands gripped loosely around her tea mug. Phil had been relieved to see that both of her parents still looked calm and relaxed.

 

“Yes, I knew,” Phil had said. “And just for the record, I like Dani just the way she is, too.”

 

Her mother’s eyes had softened, and Phil had thought she could detect a sparkle of tears at the corners of them.

 

“That’s all that matters, then,” she’d said, reaching across the table to lay a hand over Phil’s for a moment before withdrawing it back to her mug.

 

“Does that mean you two can have children?” her father had asked all of a sudden, his eyebrows raised in an overly casual look of interest.

 

Phil hadn’t even tried to hide her dismay at that question.

 

“Oh my god, Dad,” she’d cried, her whole body flushing with prickly, embarrassed heat. “We’ve barely been dating two months now. We have definitely _not_ gone anywhere _near_ that conversation yet.”

 

“Sorry, sorry,” he’d backtracked, holding up both hands. “Didn’t mean to get ahead of myself.”

 

Phil had taken a moment to breathe deeply and shoo her thoughts back into a semblance of order.

 

“If and when we reach the point that we decide we want children,” she’d told them in a measured tone, “I’m sure the both of you will be among the first to know.”

 

It had taken a lot of willpower for Phil not to instead launch into a lecture about how it was 2018 now, _Dad_ , and she and Dani could have kids even if Dani wasn’t trans. About how even if Dani turned out to still be fertile despite her HRT, Phil herself wasn’t really comfortable with the idea of being pregnant and giving birth. And how Phil had always known she wanted children and fully intended to have them, biologically or no, someday. Just not yet. There were still way too many things she wanted to accomplish first.

 

Her parents had asked a few more questions after that, mostly about how she felt about her relationship with Dani and where she saw it going, and then she’d pointed them towards some websites that could give them more in-depth information and possibly answer any questions they had been too embarrassed to ask her.

 

“Dani wanted me to tell you that she understands this all might be new and confusing for you,” Phil had summed up, “and that it’s okay to ask her questions as long as you respect her privacy the same way you would any of my previous girlfriends’.”

 

“Your Dani sounds like she’s got a very level head on her shoulders,” Phil’s mum had observed over the rim of her mug. “I can’t wait to meet her.”

 

“Same for me,” Phil’s dad had said. “She seems like a lovely girl.”

 

Phil had stayed and chatted a bit longer over tea and had left her parents’ house with a warm glow of love in her chest. She hadn’t expected them to react badly, of course. She knew them too well for that, but even she had been pleasantly surprised by how they seemed to take everything she told them in stride. Their main concerns had seemed to be the same things they always were when Phil was starting a new relationship: Was Phil happy, and could this girl finally be The One (who would help them become grandparents)?

 

Dani had been busy filming when Phil had arrived at her flat (which she had started thinking of as home almost more so than her own). Phil knew Dani had wanted to keep busy while Phil was meeting with her parents, not allow herself any free time to sit and worry that things were going badly. Phil, of course, had texted her the minute she’d left her parents’ house.

 

_they are checking out the websites i showed them, and they both said they’re very excited to finally meet you xxxx_

 

She wasn’t too surprised that she hadn’t received a response, though. Dani tended to leave her phone in the other room when she was filming, having had one too many takes ruined by it ringing or buzzing with a notification.

 

Phil had made herself comfortable on the sofa with a book, and about half an hour later, Dani had emerged from her office/studio with her face fully made up moaning something about needing a drink.

 

“What can I get you?” Phil had asked, setting aside her book and hopping up from the sofa.

 

“You’re home,” Dani had said with a tired smile and then shuffled over to wrap her arms around Phil’s middle and lay her cheek on Phil’s shoulder. “Filming is so exhausting.”

 

“I know,” Phil had murmured, reaching a hand up to smooth it over Dani’s curls. “Why don’t you sit down, and I’ll bring you a vodka cranberry?”

 

“Wanna kiss you first,” Dani had mumbled, raising her head and tilting her face back, letting Phil come to her.

 

They’d stood like that for a few minutes, getting reacquainted with one another’s lips after an entire day apart. Phil didn’t think she would ever get tired of the feel of Dani’s soft lips pressed against hers.

 

Eventually, she’d dragged herself away and made Dani sit and brought her the drink. They’d sat together and talked about Dani’s video (“Full Face of New Drugstore Makeup!”) for a while and about how she’d had to re-film part of it after discovering that her SD card had run out of space halfway through. But before long, Dani had fallen silent and then turned a wary gaze on Phil.

 

“So,” she’d said, sucking in a deep breath, “how did it go?”

 

Phil had smiled and leaned into Dani’s side where she was curled up against one arm of the sofa.

 

“Guess you didn’t get my text,” she'd murmured. “They both said they can’t wait to meet you and that they’ll check out the websites I showed them tonight.” Phil had given a little chuckle and nudged Dani’s shoulder with her own. “My mum said you sound like you’ve got a very level head on your shoulders, and my dad said you seem like a lovely girl.”

 

She hadn’t expected the reaction her words got. Dani had blinked at her for a few moments, and then all of sudden her face had crumpled up and sobs had poured out of her. Phil’s arms had gone around her at once, drawing her in close, holding her body against her chest as it shook and trembled.

 

“I’m sorry,” she’d choked out after the first bout of tears had subsided. “I’m not upset, I promise. I’m just really relieved is all.”

 

“That’s good,” Phil had murmured into her hair, arms still wrapped tight around her, “cry all you want.”

 

And Dani had taken her up on it, sobbing out all of the pent up anxiety she’d apparently had over what Phil’s parents might think of her. Phil had ended up with makeup all over her shirt, but she hadn’t minded. It would wash out (she hoped), and the cry seemed to have done Dani a lot of good. When she had calmed down again, she’d thanked Phil for agreeing to talk to her parents, and then she’d wanted to know every detail of their conversation. Phil had happily obliged.

 

When they’d climbed into bed later, after an early dinner, Dani had pulled Phil close at once and kissed her hard and then made love to her slowly, with her lips and her fingers and her body pressed against Phil like she thought if she got close enough they could merge into one person.

 

Just the thought of it now sent a thrill of anticipation and excitement through Phil’s abdomen. 

 

She’d felt it, last night in bed: what Dani was thinking, exactly what she felt for Phil. Phil had been certain as they’d fallen asleep all tangled up together that Dani’s feelings echoed Phil’s own.

 

“We’re going to be late if you don’t get dressed already,” Dani’s voice drew her back to the present moment, where she stood in Dani’s en suite with the minty flavor of toothpaste fresh on her tongue.

 

“Oh, shit, yeah,” Phil muttered, glancing down at her body, which was currently clad in blue and orange polka-dotted boxer briefs and nothing else.

 

Dani laughed and slapped Phil’s butt as she squeezed past her in the bathroom doorway and hurried over to the walk-in closet. A good half of Phil’s clothes had migrated here over the past few weeks, so she didn’t have to constantly mooch off Dani anymore.

 

She yanked on a pair of jeans and a short-sleeved, plaid button-up (or, as Dani jokingly referred to it, her “summer uniform”) and then stopped in front of Dani’s full-length mirror to sort out her hair.

 

“You look great,” Dani told her, coming up behind her and digging her fingers into Phil’s side. Phil yelped and jumped away. She was _very_ ticklish there. “Let’s go.”

 

“Fine, fine,” Phil muttered, but she pressed a careful kiss to Dani’s make-up covered cheek and followed her out the door.

 

They took an Uber to Phil’s parents’ place, just because Dani could afford things like that and was still feeling a little too fragile to have to put up with the strangers on the bus today. They spoke quietly in the backseat, made a bit of small talk with the driver, held hands as they watched the city disappear behind them outside their windows.

 

Phil noticed that Dani’s gaze was fixed out the window as the car made its way into the tiny village where Phil had spent her childhood. When they finally pulled up outside Phil’s parents’ house, Dani leaned over and whispered in her ear.

 

“It’s somehow exactly the type of place I imagined you growing up in.”

 

Phil chuckled and shook her head as they climbed out of the car and thanked their driver. She took Dani’s hand, clasping it tightly in her own as she led her up to the short walk to her parents’ front door. She felt Dani give her fingers a squeeze.

 

The door opened before they even had a chance to knock, and then her parents were there, wrapping her in hugs and shaking hands with Dani and telling her how wonderful it was to finally get to meet the girl their daughter had told them all about. Phil didn’t miss the tears that Dani wiped from the corners of her eyes when Phil’s parents had turned to usher them inside the house. Phil made sure to take her hand again and hold it firmly all the way to the dining room where dinner was already waiting.

 

Over the usual roast beef and sides, Phil’s parents asked Dani about her YouTube channel and makeup and her job at the M•A•C Store, and they asked both of them about their proposed move the following month. They asked about Phil’s plans for YouTube, how her channel had been doing (steadily gaining still), what videos she’d made recently, what ones she had coming up. It took the first fifteen to twenty minutes of the meal for Dani to truly relax, but Phil could almost see the moment when it dawned on her that Phil’s parents weren’t just lulling her into a false sense of security but genuinely did like her just as much as Phil had said they would.

 

It was like she transformed before Phil’s eyes, from the guarded fortress with sentries on high alert that she’d been when they’d first walked in the door, into the warm, funny, sarcastic woman Phil had come to love these past two months.

 

“Mrs. Lester,” Dani said, leaning forward over her half-empty plate to grin conspiratorially at Phil’s mother.

 

“Kathryn, please,” Phil’s mum smiled back at her, reaching a hand over to pat Dani’s where it lay on the table.

 

“Kathryn,” Dani repeated, her smile deepening, “did Phil really once dye her hair highlighter orange, and if so, would you be able to show me the pictures?”

 

“Oh no,” Phil groaned. In all the excitement of arranging today’s get-together she’d completely forgotten that Dani would now have access to every embarrassing story and photo that remained from her childhood.

 

“Oh, yes,” Phil’s mother replied with relish. “It was right before her first day of secondary school. We’ve got the photo out on the mantelpiece in the living room.”

 

“Perfect,” Dani cooed. “And the hamster breeding? Was that real too?”

 

“Very real,” Phil’s dad chimed in then, and Phil covered her face with her hands, her mortification tempered somewhat by the knowledge that Dani and her parents were getting along _swimmingly_. “She got a reputation around school for being the person to know if you wanted a good deal on a hamster."

 

Phil sank lower in her chair, hands still covering her face, but it was mostly for show. Behind the barrier, she was fighting a huge grin. This—Dani and her parents teasing her over Sunday dinner—it felt good. It felt really good.

 

She and Dani ended up staying far later than they had originally planned, so late that Phil’s dad insisted on driving them back to Manchester.

 

“We can probably still catch a bus,” Phil tried to protest. “It’s not that late.”

 

“You don’t wanna ride the bus all that way this time of night,” her dad insisted. “I really don’t mind.”

 

“If you’re absolutely sure,” Phil gave in, mostly because she could see the relief in Dani’s expression at the idea of not having to take the bus.

 

“Positive,” her father assured her.

 

“It’s been wonderful having you girls here,” her mother said then, popping a kiss onto her cheek and then turning to Dani. “We really enjoyed having you over, Dani. I hope you’ll join us again soon,” and then she leaned in and wrapped Dani in a quick, warm hug.

 

It took Dani a moment to wipe the surprise off her face, but she returned the embrace and murmured her thanks to Mrs. Lester for the meal and for her hospitality.

 

Once they were safe in the dark back seat of Phil’s parents’ car, Dani leaned her head on Phil’s shoulder, and it wasn’t too long before Phil heard her soft sniffles and felt a growing wet patch on the fabric of her shirt. When they were finally nearing Dani’s flat, Phil fished out a packet of tissues and handed them wordlessly to Dani, who sat up and dabbed at her face until she didn’t look quite so much as though she’d cried the entire ride home.

 

“Thanks again, Dad,” Phil said, leaning in the window of the car once she and Dani had piled out onto the pavement.

 

“Don’t mention it,” her dad said and then leaned forward and raised his voice, “It was very nice to meet you, Dani. Like Kathryn said, we’d love to have you round again sometime.”

 

“Thank you,” Dani called back, still sounding choked up.

 

When they’d at last gained the safety and privacy of Dani’s flat, Dani made at once for the sofa and plopped down, rubbing at her tear-stained face.

 

“I’m sorry for turning into a fucking waterworks,” she muttered. “I hope your dad didn’t notice.”

 

“Nah, I don’t think he did,” Phil said, toeing off her shoes and then heading over to settle herself on the sofa beside Dani. “And even if he did, I’m sure he wouldn’t have minded. They really liked you, you know.”

 

“I know,” Dani said, her voice soft and strained. “I kind of can’t believe it. Your parents are really nice, Phil. You can tell them I liked them a lot too.”

 

Phil leaned into Dani’s body, tilting her head to the side to lay it on Dani’s shoulder, mirroring their earlier positions.

 

“Good,” she murmured, feeling happy but drained. “They’ll be pleased to hear that.”

 

They sat in comfortable silence for a while, Phil slowly slipping off into a doze, before Dani abruptly spoke again.

 

“I’ve never had that.”

 

Phil blinked her eyes open and made a questioning hum in the back of her throat.

 

“I mean, in the past relationships I’ve had, at least the few that got that far, the other person’s family has always been a…difficult issue. Not that any of them were outright hostile, just… It was always clear that they were _tolerating_ me. That I was there because their child wanted me to be there but otherwise… One of my ex’s parents got better over time, once they’d grown used to me. But it was never just easy, right from the beginning.”

 

She fell silent again, and Phil waited.

 

“And, you know, even my own parents couldn’t accept me,” Dani finally murmured. “Your parents are really good people, Phil. Did you know that?”

 

“Yeah,” Phil smiled. “I got really lucky.”

 

“It explains you too,” Dani added, and Phil could hear the smile in her voice. “How you got to be the person you are.”

 

“I think that’s a compliment…?”

 

Dani chuckled.

 

“It is,” she assured her. There was another pause, and then Phil felt Dani’s shoulder nudging her off. “Hey, Phil?”

 

She dragged herself upright and turned to meet Dani’s lovely, red-rimmed eyes.

 

“Yeah?” she asked, studying her girlfriend’s face with its splotches of red showing through the makeup where her tears had washed it away, with its smudges of black around the edges of her eyes, with its lips, full and bare where her lipstick had disappeared over the course of the evening. There was always so much to see there, so much that Phil thought she would never get tired of staring at that face.

 

“I love you,” Dani said, the corners of her lips trembling, her eyes shining with a new batch of tears.

 

Inside Phil’s chest, her heart heaved to and then leapt up into her throat, making it hard to get out her reply. She forced it out anyway. She’d been waiting a while now to say the words.

 

“I love you too.”

 

Watching the smile dawn on Dani’s face was like watching the sun rise bright and blinding over the open ocean.

 

When Phil finally ripped her eyes away for long enough to lean in, their kiss tasted like saltwater and lipstick and Sunday roast and the future. It was the best kiss Phil had ever had. At least until the next one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A million, million thank yous to everyone who took the time to read my fic, to leave kudos, comment, bookmark it, or to stop by Twitter or Tumblr and talk to me about it. I can't say enough how much I appreciate all of your kind words and comments. Thanks for coming on this journey with me. Let's do it again sometime! <3
> 
> Twitter: @Smartinis  
> Tumblr: @transdimensional-void


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